INDONESIA ENCOURAGES ALL COUNTRIES TO RATIFY NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Indonesia has encouraged all countries to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Prohibition Treaty during the recent ministerial meeting of the 8th Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi stated.

"After the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed 20 years ago, we still have to work hard to implement the treaty," the minister said, as stated in a press release from the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry received here on Thursday.

The minister delivered the statement at the CTBT meeting held on the sidelines of the 71st UN General Assembly Summit in New York, United States, on September 21, 2016.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is a multilateral treaty that bans all nuclear explosions for both civil and military purposes. The CTBT treaty will be implemented if 44 states listed in Annex 2 of the CTBT have ratified it.

The 44 states are believed to have capability to develop nuclear weapons or nuclear technology and conduct nuclear weapons explosion test.

As of March 2015, 41 states in the Annex 2 have signed the CTBT, and 36 of them have ratified the treaty. Indonesia ratified the CTBT in 2011. "In order to make the world free from nuclear weapons, Indonesia has encouraged other countries in Annex 2 that have not ratified the CTBT to do so immediately," Retno said.

The foreign minister further said before the enactment of the CTBT, all state parties should refrain from conducting nuclear tests, developing new nuclear weapon technology, and taking actions contradicting the objectives of the CTBT.

"All of moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions should continue to be implemented," she said.

Retno stressed the importance of the CTBT to have an effective verification mechanism to oversee the implementation of nuclear weapons tests.

In this regard, the minister emphasized the importance of resolving quickly three pillars of verification, namely the International Monitoring System (IMS), the International Data Center (IDC), and On-site Inspection.

"State parties of the CTBT must work together so that we can complete the verification of the CTBT and monitor the implementation of the treaty," the minister said.

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