In age of proliferation, test ban treaty irrelevant, critics say

WASHINGTON -- Iran and other rogue states could develop nuclear weapons without testing them, arms control critics said.

The critics said they will continue to oppose Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty despite an adminstration campaign. They said the CTBT is useless at a time when China, North Korea and Russia transfer nuclear weapons and missile technology to such states as Iran, Libya and Syria.

The critics point to the assertion of CIA director George Tenet, who told Congress that nuclear testing is not required for nuclear weapons capability. Tenet referred to a first-generation atomic bomb with high reliability but low efficiency.

"Although nuclear testing is essential to maintaining the sophisticated nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal today, it is not required to develop relatively simple first-generation nuclear devices, like those sought by Iran and Iraq," said Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican. "The U.S. bomb dropped on Hiroshima was never tested, and the Israeli nuclear arsenal was built without testing."

Kyl said on Monday in Washington that the CTBT cannot stop the nuclear weapons program of any rogue state. He said that Russia, unlike the United States, has developed the capability of increasing the production of nuclear weapons without violating the CTBT.

The senator complained that the State Department has been disingenous in refusing to acknowledge violations of arms control treaties by such countries as China, North Korea and Russia. He pointed to a refusal by the State Department to protest Chinese violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime in wake of reports that Beijing had shipped M-11 missiles to Pakistan.

"We couldn't call the Chinese -- our strategic partner, you know -- for a probable violation of their pledge to adhere to the MTCR because we couldn't be absolutely certain that the M-11 missile canisters shipped from China to Pakistan actually contained the missiles," Kyl said. "Maybe the Pakistanis had some other use for them, the lawyers argued."

Meanwhile, a Tokyo daily reports that U.S. forces are on the alert for a Chinese ballistic missile test. The Sankei Shimbun quoted Japanese defense sources as saying that over the last two weeks the U.S. military has deployed a reconnaissance plane and ship in the Yellow Sea to monitor an imminent test-firing of a Dongfeng-31 missile. The missile has a range of 8,000 kilometers.

On Wednesday, Taiwan said the United States has granted the island nation permission to test the PAC-2 missile in 2001. Taiwan's military has acquired 200 PAC-2 missiles.