U.N. Expected To Back Worldwide Nuclear Test Ban Undeclared N-Powers India, Pakistan Will Refuse To Sign

The General Assembly began a special meeting Monday that is expected to end with an overwhelming majority of the U.N.’s 185 member states voting to support a worldwide ban on nuclear test blasts.

Despite the shadow cast over the proceedings by opposition from India and Pakistan, both undeclared nuclear powers, delegates pushed ahead on what many call a giant step toward universal nuclear disarmament.

The Indian and Pakistani positions mean the treaty will have only limited applicability for at least the immediate future. But the test ban accord has the support of the world’s principal nuclear powers, and they are expected to respect it once it is approved, according to delegates and legal experts.

In addition, supporters of the treaty believe that a heavy vote for the treaty will put pressure on India to tacitly abide by the ban and eventually to approve it. Diplomats here believe that at least 120 of the more than 160 participating countries will vote in favor, possibly on Tuesday or Wednesday.

India, which has had a clandestine nuclear program since exploding a nuclear device in 1974, said Monday it will block the proposed test-ban treaty from coming into force by refusing to sign it. India sought to kill the treaty last month by vetoing it in a Geneva disarmament conference, and it has been kept alive only because its backers resorted to the never-before-used tactic of bringing it before the General Assembly without the approval of the Geneva Conference.

In an unexpected further jolt, Pakistan, which had indicated earlier it would support the treaty, reversed course Monday and said it, too, would not sign as long as its unfriendly neighbor, India, withheld its signature. Pakistan also is a country whose approval is necessary to bring the treaty into force.

But the five principal nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - support the treaty. Israel, which is an undeclared nuclear power like India and Pakistan, also has said it will approve the pact.

Acceptance by these states and others with the capability to someday develop nuclear devices would, in the view of many legal experts, obligate them under international law to eschew future testing. That would give those countries that have suffered nuclear fallout from past tests much greater guarantees of relief than when individual nuclear powers would unilaterally adopt and abandon testing moratoriums.

The proposed pact, formally known as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, calls for outlawing all nuclear explosions for the first time since the United States tested its first atomic bomb in 1945. If the treaty is approved, President Clinton is expected to give its further international acceptance a boost by signing it on behalf of the United States when he visits the United Nations on Sept. 24.

Since the first bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945 set the stage for the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been 2,045 known nuclear tests. Of them, the United States was responsible for 1,030, the former Soviet Union for 715 and France, Britain and China for the others.

The proposed treaty was hammered out during almost three years of negotiation by the 61-nation, Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, which operates under a General Assembly mandate. Under that conference’s rules, all decisions, including the forwarding of recommendations to the assembly, must be by consensus.

India refused to give its assent because the draft treaty does not meet its demands, which include a timetable for the established nuclear powers to eliminate their arsenals before it surrenders its development and testing options. When India exercised its veto last month, the initial assumption was that the treaty effectively had been derailed.

However, Australia, long a spokesman for South Pacific nations that have been exposed repeatedly to fallout from testing in the region, decided to take the unprecedented step of asking the General Assembly to endorse the treaty despite lack of unanimous approval in Geneva.

There is no veto in the General Assembly. But, even if the assembly approves the treaty, it will not come into force until 44 countries, identified as actual or potential nuclear powers, sign it.