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Vote against CTBT severe blow to arms control

The US Senate's vote to reject a global nuclear test ban treaty deals a severe blow to arms control efforts worldwide and will cause serious strain with Washington's closest allies in Europe and Asia.

Fellow nuclear powers Russia, China and France voiced dismay on Thursday, and European experts said the vote would undermine a drive to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and let potential ''rogue states'' off the hook.

The leaders of three key European allies -- Tony Blair of Britain, Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhard Schroeder of Germany -- had appealed jointly to the senate last week to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty, warning that rejection would expose a split in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

One of Chirac's aides said on Thursday, "The president expressed his dismay. This decision is a setback to the process of non-proliferation and disarmament."

European analysts said the vote would gravely undermine President Bill Clinton's authority in pressing other countries to meet their arms control commitments or subscribe to new ones.

European experts dismissed arguments by some US critics that the test ban treaty was unverifiable, saying the vote appeared to have been driven by the Republicans' determination to humiliate Clinton and deny him a victory.

After India and Pakistan raised global alarm by conducting tit-for-tat nuclear tests last year, the US, European Union states and Japan applied economic pressure that led both countries to promise to sign the test ban treaty.

Both New Delhi and Islamabad now have a perfect pretext for refusing to make good on those commitments.

"How can Mr Bill Clinton go to India and Pakistan now and argue for arms control,'' asked William Hopkinson, director of the International Security Programme at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs.

"This sends the negative message that the United States is not serious about arms control for itself. What they have done is foolish and will have repercussions in the Middle East and the [Indian] subcontinent,'' he said.

Analysts said the US move could harden opposition in the Russian duma [parliament] to ratifying the long-pending START-2 arms reduction treaty and dim prospects for a more radical START-3 pact to get rid of Cold War strategic nuclear arsenals.

It could also make Russia less co-operative when the US seeks to renegotiate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to permit it to deploy a limited national missile defence against an attack from a "rogue state".

In east Asia, the moral legitimacy of US-led efforts to prevent North Korea from developing its nuclear programme may also be undermined, experts said.

Gilles Andreani, a French arms control expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said allied governments had expected the Republican-dominated senate would eventually postpone the issue after embarrassing the Democratic president, rather than vote down the treaty.

"No one expected it would be this abominably catastrophic," he said.

Andreani said the move would open a rift between Washington and its allies, and fuel criticism that the US was succumbing to a "unilateralist" tendency to consider itself above all constraints of international law.

Experts agreed the US vote would not immediately unleash a new arms race and was unlikely to lead to any country resuming nuclear testing in the near future.

But Andreani said the decision had damaged the whole edifice of arms control politically.

Next year's review conference of the functioning of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, renewed indefinitely in 1995, was likely to turn into an angry confrontation between non-nuclear states and Washington, he said.

"The Americans are bound be in the dock, which, in turn, may feed congressional hostility to arms control,'' Andreani said.

"The most important nuclear power is seen not to be fulfilling its part of the global disarmament bargain."

The senate decision also raised doubts about the prospects for negotiating a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty, which would be far harder to verify than the test ban accord.

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