Croatia ratifies Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Croatia deposited its instrument of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) with the Secretary-General of the United Nations on 2 March 2001. Croatia is the seventy-second State Signatory to have ratified the Treaty.

Under Article XIV, to enter into force, the CTBT has to be ratified by 44 nuclear-capable States that formally participated in the work of the 1996 Conference on Disarmament and that possess nuclear power and research reactors. Under the CTBT, an international monitoring system (IMS) of 321 stations, using four complementary technologies, will register data necessary to monitor compliance with the Treaty. The stations will be capable of registering vibrations from a possible nuclear explosion underground, in the seas and in the air, as well as detecting radioactive debris released into the atmosphere from such an explosion. The monitoring stations will transmit, via satellite, the data to the International Data Centre (IDC) at the CTBTO Preparatory Commission in Vienna, where the data will be used to detect, locate and characterise events. The data and other IDC products will be made available to the States Signatories for final analysis.

The 72 States that have ratified the Treaty are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Greece, Grenada, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People´s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mali, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. (To date, 160 States have signed the Treaty). The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty bans any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion anywhere in the world. Drafted at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and adopted by the General Assembly on 10 September 1996, the Treaty was opened for signature on 24 September 1996 at the United Nations in New York.

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