VIENNA, AUGUST 26 – Addressing the 53rd Session of the CTBTO (Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization) Working Group B, the Italian Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna, Ambassador Maria Assunta Accili, stressed the treaty’s key role in non-proliferation, as well as the wide-ranging benefits of civilian applications of International Monitoring System (IMS) data and the need for the verification regime to display its full potential even prior to the CTBT’s entry into force.
The CTBTO is an international Vienna-based organization that will be established upon the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, a Convention that outlaws nuclear test explosions. 164 countries have signed the Treaty, of which 168 have also ratified it, including three of the nuclear weapon States: France, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom. But 44 specific nuclear technology holder countries must sign and ratify before the CTBT can enter into force. Of these, eight are still missing: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the USA. India, North Korea and Pakistan have yet to sign the CTBT. The last Annex 2 State to ratify the Treaty was Indonesia on 6 February 2012.
Once established, the organization will be tasked with verifying the ban on nuclear tests and will operate therefore a worldwide monitoring system and may conduct on site inspections. The Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO, and its Provisional Technical Secretariat, were established in 1997 and are headquartered in Vienna as well. The Treaty bans any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion anywhere in the world. Drafted at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and adopted by the General Assembly on 10 September 1996, the Treaty was opened for signature on 24 September 1996 at the United Nations in New York. Italy signed the Treaty on the same day and ratified it three years later. It was the twenty-eighth signatory State to have ratified the Treaty and is one of the 44 countries listed in the Treaty whose ratification is necessary for its entry into force.
Italy is also hosting one auxiliary seismic station in Valguarnera (Sicily) and one radionuclide laboratory in Rome that will be part of the international network of monitoring stations that the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO PrepCom) is establishing or upgrading to verify compliance with the Treaty. (@OnuItalia)