The head of the organization created to monitor a global ban on nuclear tests said Friday that he hoped the United States would reverse course and ratify the treaty after President-elect Barack Obama takes office next year, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Sept. 25).
“It will take more than couple of months, but I am very optimistic there will be resumed efforts in the Senate to ratification,” said Tibor Toth, chief of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization.
Signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996, the test ban treaty was later rejected by the U.S. Senate, and President George W. Bush has never supported the pact’s ratification.
The treaty requires ratification by 44 specific nations, including the United States, before it can enter into force. The eight other holdouts are China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.
Toth sought to address past U.S. objections to the treaty by arguing that monitoring capabilities have improved significantly since North Korea performed the world’s last nuclear blast in 2006 (see GSN, Oct. 9).
“A global communication infrastructure has been totally replaced by a new one,” he said (Kyodo News, Nov. 7).
For his part, Obama told the Chicago Tribune in January that, “Yes, I would seek [CTBT] ratification by the Senate” (Chicago Tribune, Jan. 18).