Bush will not sign non-nuclear treaty

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 2

Bush will not sign non-nuclear treaty

NZPA-AFP Washington President George Bush would not sign the Treaty of Rarotonga creating a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific, senior officials said yesterday. The acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Mr Richard Williams, said that although a Bush Administration review of the matter was not yet completed, “we have decided not to sign the treaty. “We would not like to see nuclear-free zones extended to additional areas,” he told a congressional panel. He specifically voiced fears that United States acceptance of the pact officially called the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty, would lend “significant impetus” to calls for a nuclear-free zone covering South-east Asia, where the United States maintains big military bases. The former Administration of President Reagan accepted a nuclear-free zone treaty for Latin America, but the officials yesterday said Mr Bush’s

Government would not agree to such a zone in the South Pacific. The Pentagon objects in particular to a protocol in the Treaty of Rarotonga barring the permanent “stockpiling, storage, installation and deployment” of nuclear arms in the treaty area, said the principal deputy , assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, Mr Carl Ford. “We may have no intention of ever doing that, but we don’t want to confirm it,” he said. He called the treaty’s language on the stationing of

nuclear weapons “so restrictive and so much of a precedent that it becomes a slippery slope that could lead to compromising our ‘neither confirm nor deny’ policy.” United States forces as a matter of policy never confirm nor deny that United States ships are carrying nuclear weapons. The Treaty of Rarotonga does not prohibit the transit of nuclear-armed ships through the region and leaves the issue of port calls by such vessels up to individual signatories. The two officials acknowledged that French opposition to a treaty provision banning nuclear testing in the South Pacific was a factor in the United States decision. France tests its nuclear devices under the Polynesian atoll of Mururoa. The Treaty of Rarotonga came into force in December, 1986, when Australia became the eighth signatory to ratify the pact. Other signatories include New Zealand, Fiji, Kiribati and Western Samoa. The Soviet Union and China have also signed all or parts of the accord.