China expected to sign N-treaty protocols next

Press, 18 December 1986, Page 18

China expected to sign N-treaty protocols next

NZPA-AAP Suva China is expected to be the second nuclear Power to sign the protocols to the South Pacific NuclearFree Zone Treaty, diplomatic sources said.

It was unlikely that the United States would do so in the near future, while Britain was biding its time, the sources said. France had already declined. The Soviet Union on Monday became the first of the five nuclear weapons countries to agree to the protocols, just four days after the treaty

came into effect. The Soviet Ambassador Dr E. M. Samoteikin, who is based in Canberra but also accredited to Suva, made a flying visit to Suva for the ceremony at the headquarters of the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation. The two protocols he signed referred to the use, or threatened use, and the testing of nuclear devices in the nuclear-free zone, which covers the entire South Pacific south of the equator. The other protocol, under which signatories

agree not to manufacture, station or test nuclear devices in their Pacific territories, does not apply to the Soviet Union or China. A spokesman at China’s embassy in Suva told A.A.P. yesterday that it was “seriously considering” accrediting to the treaty’s protocols. But no decision had yet been made. An American embassy spokesman said there was “no need for the United States to hasten its response” because of what the Soviet Union had done.