A new era of US diplomacy under Barack Obama is providing fresh momentum for a global ban on nuclear tests, monitors in a UN-backed group said Tuesday.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), drawn up in 1996, has been signed by 181 countries and ratified by 149. But it needs to be ratified by nine others, including China and the United States, before coming into force.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) said recent positive signals from the Obama administration will persuade other countries to ratify. A conference is being held in New York this month to speed up the process.
The current environment is "a good political and overall context, because of the new atmosphere created by the Obama administration," said France's envoy to the UN organisations in Vienna, Francoise Mangin.
She and her Moroccan counterpart Omar Zniber are currently co-ordinating the process and will co-chair the New York meeting.
"If the US and China succeed in ratifying, it will have an impact," Mangin told journalists.
For the first time in 10 years, the US will actually participate in the meeting, noted Moroccan ambassador Zniber.
CTBTO executive secretary Tibor Toth said it would an "uphill" struggle to get the remaining countries on board.
"But my feeling is that it's do-able," he said. "It won't happen tomorrow, it won't happen next week, but it's very much do-able. And I don't think in a longer perspective that we have too many other alternatives than to put this treaty in place."
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