AUSTRALIA announced yesterday that it would lead a campaign for a comprehensive test ban treaty after negotiations ended with a whimper because of Indian opposition.
Canberra said that to avoid a grave setback to non proliferation efforts it would push quickly for international agreement, isolating the recalcitrants, to culminate in a formal signing ceremony at the United Nations next month.
Decades of expectation and two and a half years of bargaining in the 61 member Geneva Conference on Disarmament wound up on Thursday without the consensus required. India and Iran opposed the draft comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT).
The CTBT outlaws permanently all nuclear explosions and includes procedures for monitoring and verifying compliance. It can pass the UN General Assembly by majority vote, though serious problems remain about ratification by national parliaments and how the agreement will be enforced.
Critics say it was wrong of the world's declared nuclear powers (the US, Russia, France, Britain and China) to hold the treaty hostage to Indian agreement, but acknowledge that it will still be a landmark event.
"Signature of the treaty by the five nuclear weapons states will mean the end of one element of the nuclear arms race - the development of advanced new weapons," said Mr Stephen Young of the British American Security Information Council. "Without testing this will be impossible."
Australia's initiative returns it to a role it has played before as bridge between the non-nuclear and nuclear powers - one enhanced by its vigorous opposition to the last controversial stage of France's testing programme in the Pacific.
"I am deeply committed to an end to testing and I am convinced that this historic opportunity to secure a CTBT should not be lost," the Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, said yesterday.
Time is very short if the treaty is to get through the UN because the nuclear powers want to avoid the text being re opened for amendment by the UN committee which discusses disarmament matters and which is to meet in October.
This means there are barely three weeks to act before the current 50th General Assembly closes on September 16th.
India said it opposed the treaty because it did not commit the nuclear powers to disarmament within a specified time frame and allowed them to refine their arsenals through permitted laboratory tests while the nuclear "have nots" would be permanently barred.