Ministers To Discuss Banning Nuclear Testing

Putting An End To Nuclear Test Explosions!

Ministers From Latin American And Caribbean Countries To Discuss Promoting Treaty Banning All Nuclear Testing

The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) has the honour to announce a Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Latin American and Caribbean Countries on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) from 29 to 30 September 2008 in San José, Costa Rica.

Media representatives are cordially invited to attend a press conference that will be held on 30 September at 15:10at the Hotel Intercontinental in San José(Prospero Fernández Highway, in front of MultiplazaShopping Center, Escazú, Tel.: +506-22082100).

The meeting is jointly convoked by the Foreign Ministers of Costa Rica, Bruno Stagno UGARTE, and Austria, Ursula PLASSNIK, who co-chaired the last Conference on facilitating the entry into force of the CTBT, known as Article XIV Conference, in 2007. The Foreign Ministers of Bahamas, Mexicoand the Dominican Republicare scheduled to address the meeting.

The meeting will discuss how to further improve adherence to the Treaty in the region by highlighting the rights and benefits of membership to the CTBT, including the potential global security benefits of a universal ban on nuclear testing, as well as the political relevance of the CTBT as one of the pillars of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime.

An important part of the meeting will also be dedicated to the civil and scientific applications of the data collected by the network of over 300 stations of the Treaty’s International Monitoring System. These include transmission of data for tsunami warning, on the formation of storms and hurricanes, monitoring of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, monitoring of climate change and of global warming, monitoring of radioactivity in the atmosphere, and many more.

The meeting in San Joséfollows a Meeting of around 40 Foreign Ministers to promote the early entry-into-force of the CTBT on 24 September 2008at UN Headquarters in New York.

Global adherence to the CTBT is almost universal with a total of 179 States having signed and 144 having ratified the Treaty. To enter into force, however, the CTBT must be signed and ratified by all 44 States listed in its Annex 2. These States participated in the Treaty’s negotiations in 1996 and possessed nuclear technology at the time. 35 of these States have ratified, the nine remaining ones being China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea(DPRK),Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States.

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