European concerns at the US administration's go-it-alone tendencies will have been reinforced this weekend by White House confirmation that it hopes to see the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) die in the Senate.
But US officials insist they do not want to see a resumption of testing, currently suspended by the nuclear powers under a voluntary moratorium.
The treaty, whose rejection in the Senate in 1999 was a bitter blow to former president Clinton, was repeatedly denounced as "fatally flawed" by President Bush during the election campaign.
It is now trapped in limbo in the Senate from which it cannot be withdrawn without the latter's approval, the legal office of the State Department has told the US administration.
But the treaty requires a two thirds majority for ratification, far more than the Democrat-controlled Senate can muster.
The White House now hopes it will simply languish in the Senate while US diplomats press allies to accept that its ratification is a dead duck. At the forthcoming G8 summit in Genoa, for example, they will be working to avoid the customary language in the final declaration expressing hope that the treaty will be ratified quickly. As recently as December, NATO ministers said "we remain committed to an early entry into force of the CTBT".
The administration's hardening approach will hardly come as a surprise to allies but will feed concerns about the US's attitude to proliferation and to international treaties in the wake of its repudiation of the Kyoto protocol on climate change and Mr Bush's expressed desire to tear up the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty to allow him to proceed with missile defence.
Republicans have criticised the CTBT as undermining the US confidence in its stockpile of untested nuclear weapons and because they say it is largely unverifiable.
The director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, Mr Daryll Kimball, has warned the New York Times that "the continued US failure to follow through on its CTBT commitments leaves the door open to a global chain reaction of nuclear testing, instability and confrontation in the future". Any suggestion that the US would breach the testing moratorium is likely to set off a major international furore as France's President Jacques Chirac discovered in 1995 when he announced French tests near the Pacific island of Mururoa, opening up a wide rift with even his closest European ally, Germany.
Although the administration insists it has no intention to test, there were reports last week of a decision to fund an upgrade of the Nevada test facilities.
Just routine, officials said.
Support for the repudiation of the treaty from within the military is not, however, to be taken for granted.
In January, just before Mr Bush took office, Gen John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a report to Mr Clinton urging the US to ratify.
Gen Shalikashvili, who spent 10 months conducting a review of the treaty, interviewing nuclear experts, weapons designers and senators, concluded that ratification would increase national security, and the security benefits of the treaty would outweigh disadvantages.
More than 150 countries have signed the CTBT, but it can come into force only when 44 potentially nuclear-capable countries ratify it.
Diplomats, gun activists and weapons makers from around the world gather in New York today for a two-week conference aimed at stemming an illegal trade in small arms blamed for half a million deaths a year.
"These arms are doing incredible damage in cities, and in war-torn areas, and I hope we can get the manufacturers and governments to work with us in controlling the flow of these illicit arms," the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan said. The conference is due to adopt a global action plan against small arms trafficking by delegates from the United Nations' 189 member-nations.
--(Reuters)
