August 2, 2002	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 22,1423

WASHINGTON: The US National Academy of Sciences issued a report on Wednesday strongly backing US ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), in a rebuff to the Bush administration’s policy of shelving the agreement.

The report was compiled over two years by a panel that included some of the country’s leading nuclear scientists and the former commander of US forces in the Pacific, Charles Larson. It addressed the major security concerns raised by the Senate when it refused to ratify the treaty in 1999, and on each issue judged that the US would face “a more dangerous world” without the treaty.

The report was commissioned by the Clinton administration, but President George Bush views the accord, which has yet to come into force, as unverifiable and a constraint on America’s ability to develop and test new nuclear weapons.

Soon after Bush took office, officials examined ways to withdraw the treaty from the Senate to ensure it was not ratified, but they were told by legal advisers that they had no constitutional power to do so.

Since then, the treaty has been in limbo, although radical conservatives in the administration have continued to press for the US to go further and renounce the treaty.

Moderates at the National Security Council blocked a high-level discussion on the Pentagon’s options, in effect, shelving the debate. But as the unilateral US moratorium on nuclear tests approaches its tenth anniversary in September, some arms control advocates are concerned that the administration could use the occasion to withdraw from the CTBT.

Most diplomatic observers think that is unlikely. But they believe pressure from radicals to ditch the moratorium and the treaty will mount during the remaining two years of President Bush’s first term.

Pentagon hawks are keen to test a new generation of tactical nuclear missiles aimed at destroying deep, heavily reinforced bunkers. The need for such weapons was expressed by the administration’s nuclear posture review, which was leaked earlier this year. The 2003 defence budget earmarks $15.5 million to modify existing weapons for that purpose.

The report by the Academy of Sciences represents a blow to Pentagon radicals.

It rejects the chief technical criticisms of the treaty: that it would prevent the US conducting tests essential to maintain its nuclear readiness, and that it was unverifiable because other countries could conduct tests in secret.

On the first issue, the panel found that “the US has the technical capabilities to maintain confidence in the safety and reliability of its existing nuclear-weapon stockpile under the CTBT”.

It argued that there was an array of increasingly sophisticated means of checking and maintaining weapons without nuclear tests.

The report conceded that if sophisticated masking techniques were used, a rogue state could hide a blast of up to two kilotons.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.