Uphold the nuclear weapons test moratorium.

The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because when we destroy our resources and our resources become scarce, we fight over that.I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.

According to the UN Charter (Article 26), the UN Security Council is the primary organ responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Nuclear states agreed to the adoption of a UN Security Council Resolution that provided positive security assurances. The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution №255 on June 19, 1968, was of particular significance. This resolution stipulated that instances of aggression involving the use of nuclear weapons or the threat of such aggression against a non-nuclear-weapon state would require immediate action by the UN Security Council and its permanent members, who are nuclear-armed states. The aim of the work is to determine the role of the UN Security Council in the system of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The methodological basis of the study will focus on the analysis and understanding of the impact of the UN Security Council on strategies and measures aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the international context. The results of our research have shown that the role of the UN Security Council in the disarmament of Iraq’s nuclear program, which could have led to the development of nuclear weapons, proved to be significant. To achieve this, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution №687 adopted on April 3, 1991, the Special Commission (UNSCOM) was established. During an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council at the highest level on September 24, 2009, Resolution UN Security Council Resolution № 1887 was adopted, aimed at supporting nuclear non-proliferation, criticizing Iran and North Korea. Resolution №1887 outlines measures to strengthen control and the rights of nuclear-weapon states to demand the return of nuclear materials and equipment in case of violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty or withdrawal from it. It also involves enhancing security measures for the storage of nuclear materials and strict export controls. Conclusions. In our opinion, the powers of the UN Security Council in the field of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction should be utilized more promptly and effectively. The insufficient effectiveness of this international mechanism in preventing proliferation remains a cause for serious concern among UN members worldwide. To enhance the effectiveness of the UN Security Council, we propose the adoption of a comprehensive resolution that includes provisions on the procedure for a state’s withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and its violation of commitments to refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons. This resolution should stipulate the imposition of sanctions against such a state based on a special report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Such a mechanism can ensure an effective impact of the international community on states that withdraw from the NPT.

Since 2006 to 2017 the Security Council has passed a resolution on North Korea's nuclear test act. Article 25 of the UN Charter states that Members of the United Nations agree to accept and implement the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with this Charter. North Korea as a UN member state that obtained the UN Security Council Resolution is obliged to implement the sanctions resolution. However, the sanctions contained in the resolution did not make North Korea stop its nuclear program and it shows North Korea's noncompliance with UN Security Council resolutions. Implications accompanying any denial by North Korea against the UN Security Council resolution which in general affects four fields, namely the fields of economy, politics, defense and international cooperation. In addition to non-military sanctions, the Security Council under chapter VII Article 42 of the UN Charter can impose military sanctions where possible, the Security Council can also impose sanctions through the UN General Assembly on its recommendation to suspend the rights of UN membership) and expulsion of a country from UN membership).

Introduction: Security and Insecurity DilemmasNorth Korea has a long history of brinkmanship, using incendiary rhetoric often aimed at its target's deepest fears to improve Pyongyang's leverage. In addition, ever since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the infamous Axis of Evil speech, much has been written about the United States' aggressive unilateralism and the heightened possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula.1 Events such as reports of the North Koreans restarting their nuclear program, the United States attacking the first member of the Axis, and the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel may be seen to have brought such a conflict even closer.2In traditional security and strategic analysis, the military capabilities of one state, even if they are perceived by that state as being for defensive purposes (to deter others from aggression), are viewed by other states as a potential threat.3 This is referred to as the security dilemma. Thus North Korean acquisition of enhanced military capabilities, particularly those with long-range force projection (such as missiles) or mass destruction potential (such as nuclear weapons), is seen as posing a threat to the security of other parties.However, this paper contends that is not the increasing strength of North Korea that poses the threat to regional security, but rather Pyongyang's increasing weakness- an dilemma4 rather than a security dilemma. For Georg Sorenson an insecurity dilemma exists when inwardly weak but outwardly strong states pose an intervention dilemma for liberal states-they do not pose a threat to others, but do pose a threat to their own people.5 The term is used slightly differently here in that inward vulnerability is projected outwards as a diversionary and unifying tactic, thereby causing international uncertainty and instability and even potential security threats to neighboring states and their allies, almost as a form of collateral damage.Increased ThreatsIn the wake of a second, more successful North Korean nuclear weapon test on May 25, 2009, and the test-firing of more missiles on the following day, South Korea and the United States upgraded the threat level and readiness of their forces to the second highest level.6 The UN Security Council issued statements of concern and criticism, and on June 12 passed UN Security Council Resolution 1874 (with the support of both China and Russia) condemning Pyongyang's actions, increasing existing sanctions, and adding some new provisions aimed at curtailing the regime's nuclear activities.7South Korea also announced would join the Proliferation Security Initiative, leading to the prospect of South Korean personnel boarding North Korean vessels.8 Pyongyang responded by issuing belligerent statements, including that would consider any search or seizure of its vessels as an act of war to which would respond with a military strike. On May 27 North Korea announced was abandoning the truce that ended the Korean War.9 In response to UN Security Council Resolution 1874 the North Koreans asserted that it has become an absolutely impossible option for North Korea to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons.10 Indeed, spokespersons and commentators on both sides have described threats emanating from the other as constituting more than the usual saber rattling.11In examining the increased threat posed by an actor is important to assess the two components of threat individually: (1) an increased capability of the actor to inflict harm and (2) an increased desire or intent to do so. The importance of recent developments in Northeast Asia is not only that more successful nuclear and missile tests suggest increased North Korean capability, but also that they, along with the nation's bellicose statements, may be perceived as indicating more hostile intent. However, the degree to which North Korean actions and rhetoric demonstrate an increase in threat capability or intent is subject to debate. …

IntroductionAre the days of hope for North Korea's nuclear denuclearization over once and for all? North Korea's recent disclosure of its uranium enriched program (UEP), in addition to its plutonium-based nuclear arsenal, the possible instability of power succession from North Korea's top leader, Kim Jong Il, to his son Kim Jong Un, and the North Korean leadership's blind reliance on its nuclear program as the ultimate guarantor of its regime survival, all point to a pessimistic assessment that it would be impossible to persuade North Korea to negotiate away its nuclear program for whatever rewards might obtain from the United States and the international community.Admittedly many people hoped for some sort of breakthrough on the nuclear front as the Obama administration took office in January 2009, expressing its willingness to engage North Korea. Although he didn't mention North Korea by name, President Obama pledged in his inaugural address to reach out to isolated regimes. As Democratic presidential candidate, Obama also expressed an active interest in engaging North Korea in a presidential debate in September 2008 when he criticized the Bush administration's lack of diplomatic engagement with North Korea, and supported sustained, direct and aggressive diplomacy to resolve North Korean nuclear issues.2Obama's criticism was clearly directed against the Bush administration's non-engagement policy toward North Korea during its first term. In fact, such an approach was inevitable, given the Bush team's fundamental distrust of the Pyongyang regime that had failed to keep its promises despite a series of previous nuclear pacts with the United States, including the Agreed Framework in 1994. The Bush administration avoided any further nuclear deal with North Korea during its first term, determined not to accept any demands from Pyongyang because doing so might leave them open to comparison with the Clinton Its North Korea policy was even described as the ABC (Anything but Clinton) policy.3However, the Bush team's hawkish stance began to crumble when North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in October 2006. Tension was already rising since Washington made a big issue of Pyongyang's secret uranium enrichment program (UEP) in October 2005. North Korea initially acknowledged its presence, but has denied it ever since. Hard pressed by the urgent need to keep North Korea's unfettered nuclear pursuits at bay, chief U.S. negotiator Chris Hill hastened to pull off a series of nuclear deals with North Korea, with the full support of President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. North Korea froze its plutonium activities and finally submitted its nuclear declaration in 2009, for which it received political benefits from the United States, including being removed from the U.S. terrorism list. However, the previously uneventful nuclear talks stalled when both sides failed to iron out the differences on verification of North Korea's nuclear declaration.It was against this backdrop that many people expected some sort of breakthrough in the stalled nuclear talks when the new Obama administration came in. However, such expectations were shattered by North Korea's unexpected provocations right from the beginning of the Obama administration. On April 5, 2009, North Korea launched a l ong-range ballistic missile that, it argued, was the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, intended to be put into orbit through a space launch vehicle, Unha-2. The strong U.S. condemnation, followed by the unanimous UN Security Council Resolution 1874, prompted North Korea to embolden rather than change its behavior. In defiance of the UN resolution, the North conducted its second nuclear test in May 2009, which dealt a fatal blow to the Obama administration's efforts for engagement. The second nuclear test unequivocally demonstrated once again Pyongyang's intention of not giving up its nuclear program despite a series of nuclear pacts with the previous Bush administration. …

On March 7, 2013, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2094 (2013), bolstering the scope of United Nations (UN) sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Resolution represents the international community’s latest attempt at applying diplomatic and economic pressure to the DPRK so as to curb its nuclear weapons program. The resolution is also a response to the DPRK’s third nuclear test on February 12, 2013 and its subsequent threat to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea. Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council responded to these grave violations of its existing Resolutions—seen as clear threats to international peace and security—by building upon, strengthening, and expanding the scope of the sanctions regime against the DPRK.

On-site inspection (OSI) is one of the four verification provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Under the provisions of the CTBT, once the Treaty has entered into force, any signatory party can request an on-site inspection, which can then be carried out after approval (by majority voting) of the Executive Council. Once an OSI is approved, a team of 40 inspectors will be assembled to carry out an inspection to ''clarify whether a nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion has been carried out in violation of Article I''. One challenging aspect of carrying out an on-site inspection (OSI) in the case of a purported underground nuclear explosion is to detect and locate the underground effects of an explosion, which may include an explosion cavity, a zone of damaged rock, and/or a rubble zone associated with an underground collapsed cavity. The CTBT (Protocol, Section II part D, paragraph 69) prescribes several types of geophysical investigations that can be carried out for this purpose. One of the methods allowed by the CTBT for geophysical investigation is referred to in the Treaty Protocol as ''resonance seismometry''. This method, which was proposed and strongly promoted by Russia during the Treaty negotiations, is not described in the Treaty. Some clarification about the nature of the resonance method can be gained from OSI workshop presentations by Russian experts in the late 1990s. Our understanding is that resonance seismometry is a passive method that relies on seismic reverberations set up in an underground cavity by the passage of waves from regional and teleseismic sources. Only a few examples of the use of this method for detection of underground cavities have been presented, and those were done in cases where the existence and precise location of an underground cavity was known. As is the case with many of the geophysical methods allowed during an OSI under the Treaty, how resonance seismology really works and its effectiveness for OSI purposes has yet to be determined. For this experiment, we took a broad approach to the definition of ''resonance seismometry''; stretching it to include any means that employs passive seismic methods to infer the character of underground materials. In recent years there have been a number of advances in the use of correlation and noise analysis methods in seismology to obtain information about the subsurface. Our objective in this experiment was to use noise analysis and correlation analysis to evaluate these techniques for detecting and characterizing the underground damage zone from a nuclear explosion. The site that was chosen for the experiment was the Mackerel test in Area 4 of the former Nevada Test Site (now named the Nevada National Security Site, or NNSS). Mackerel was an underground nuclear test of less than 20 kT conducted in February of 1964 (DOENV-209-REV 15). The reason we chose this site is because there was a known apical cavity occurring at about 50 m depth above a rubble zone, and that the site had been investigated by the US Geological Survey with active seismic methods in 1965 (Watkins et al., 1967). Note that the time delay between detonation of the explosion (1964) and the time of the present survey (2010) is nearly 46 years - this would not be typical of an expected OSI under the CTBT.

The main driver of Pakistan's nuclear weapon program is existing military threat emanating from India's conventional and nuclear military capabilities. Though India often cites Chinese nuclear weapons program as the main driver for its nuclear weapons' pursuits, India's Program was on sound footings well before China's nuclear test in 1964. New Delhi's decision to go nuclear had provided Islamabad a God-sent opportunity to pullout its nuclear Program from the shadow of ambiguity and lay claims over comparable capability and capacity. For Pakistan, there was just one reason for wanting “The Bomb” that Indian Nuclear had to be countered by Pakistani nuclear, for nuclear could only be countered by nuclear. India's nuclear Program is status driven, something it thinks would place it into a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Ironically Pakistan's necessity driven nuclear Program continues to draw ire. While at the same time, India's luxury driven nuclear Program is being afforded further enablers. Pakistan has expressed willingness to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) simultaneously with India. Furthermore, India's dangerous doctrinal orientations and US$ 120 billion modernization and up-gradation Programs have upped the asymmetry in conventional domain vis-a-vis Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistan views deterrence through a comprehensive lens comprising conventional and nuclear capabilities. The international community needs to view Pakistan's nuclear weapon program in the context of the threat it faces. The civilian component of nuclear program is aimed at enabling Pakistan to overcome its energy shortage through nuclear fuel.

On September 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at the United Nations (UN), calling it “the longest-sought, hardest-fought prize in the history of arms control.” This treaty bans all nuclear weapon test explosions and any other nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, of any size, and at any time in the future–a complete “zero-yield” ban on nuclear testing. Indeed, it is a crowning accomplishment of over forty years of bipartisan arms control efforts in the United States, beginning in the 50s with the Eisenhower administration. Over 145 countries have now signed the CTBT, a global endorsement of political support with a pledge to abide by the terms of the Treaty until it becomes international law. Before this happens, 44 countries with nuclear capabilities, either in reactor technologies, research, or weaponry, must ratify the Treaty and submit instruments of ratification to the UN Secretary General. Three...

A global radionuclide monitoring system is being engineered as part of a multi-technology verification system for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The system detects airborne radioactive aerosols and gases that can indicate nuclear weapons test debris. The backbone of the system is a network of 80 remote detection stations that utilize high-volume air sampling and high-resolution gamma spectrometry to provide in-situ assay and near-real time reporting. These stations are linked to the International Data Centre, which is a central data processing hub where raw spectral data is automatically processed, analyzed, and disseminated to the states parties. Measurements are categorized based on spectral content to determine which contain anomalous anthropogenic radionuclides that require intensive radiochemical analysis at a certified laboratory. The resulting system has the capability to measure microbecquerel concentrations of radionuclides and provide accessible data products within minutes of field measurements. During the past year of international operations, the minimum detectable concentrations and spectroscopy processing statistics were recorded as a function of geographical location and time. The results show that this system is an effective tool for nuclear test monitoring, as well as other applications such as radiological emergency response, public health monitoring, and scientific research.

Two decades after the U.S. Senate declined in 1999 to give its consent to ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the treaty remains in legal and political limbo. Legally, the treaty cannot enter into force without U.S. ratification. However, the Senate’s rejection does not strip the treaty of its force as an element of customary international law or alter the will of other signatories to see it enter into force. Politically, the debate over the virtues and flaws of the treaty remains as strong as ever, with some CTBT advocates pushing energetically for U.S. re-review while some opponents seek ways to “un-sign” the treaty. Meanwhile, despite the Senate’s rejection of the treaty, the United States acts in a manner consistent with its main obligations by maintaining a moratorium on explosive nuclear testing and providing financial support (as well as technical expertise) to the CTBT Organization (CTBTO)—in particular the CTBTO’s International Monitoring System (IMS). The CTBT may well remain in such limbo for a long time to come, unless some catalytic event comes along to re-shape national perceptions and priorities, one way or the other. The treaty’s future, whatever it might be, will be determined in part by how much perspectives might have changed in light of interim developments. Our purpose is to shed light on some of those developments and to assess their relevance. The 1999 ratification debate addressed a large number of issues. Rejection was driven by various policy and technical judgments. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine those technical judgments in light of what has been learned over the following two decades. On some technical matters, there was explicit recognition of extant uncertainties, as well as a conviction and hope that time would dispel them. To be doubly clear, our purpose is not to recommend a way forward on CTBT ratification. The policy judgments of 1999 and 2020 are beyond the scope of this paper. This technical re-examination proceeds as follows. It begins with a short background section to introduce the key technical matters in discussion in the U.S. ratification process. Then it moves systematically through each of those topics with a review of relevant background information, a discussion of key points in debate, an analysis of subsequent experience, and a current assessment. The historical analysis draws on many sources including the primary documents of the Congressional debate, the official article-by-article interpretation by the Department of State, and the statements of key players in the process. We also relied on key technical reports and publications by subject matter experts that have addressed in more detail many of the issues in our focus. These sources include the 2002 and 2012 reports of the National Academy of Sciences as well as publications by senior technical staff of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who were actively involved in the ratification debate, including then-Laboratory Director Bruce Tarter. We also conducted several interviews with government officials from the 1990s, past laboratory directors, and other members of the scientific community. But, except where individuals are specifically cited by name, the judgments offered here are our own and should not be attributed to any other individual or to LLNL as such.

This article considers US-French collaboration on Lebanon, especially between 2004 and 2008. It examines the political background to such collaboration and its manifestations at the United Nations Security Council and in the two powers' relations with Lebanon, Syria, and other regional players. We argue that the changed political landscape in the Middle East following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq (particularly Syrian policy in Lebanon and towards Iraq) as well as developments in the Lebanese theater since the turn of the 21st century prompted such collaboration. After briefly discussing the insights of Realist and Liberal Internationalist theories of international relations, the article concludes that Daniel Deudney's Republican Security Theory offers the most plausible explanation for US-French collaboration on Lebanon. The literature on the international relations of the Middle East has devoted limited attention to how the United States and major European powers (primarily France and Britain, but increasingly the European Union) have worked together or at cross-purposes in pursuit of their interests in the region. Published work tended to emphasize US-European rivalries and competition, highlighting how the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s sought to replace France and Britain as the dominant power in the region.1 Breaking away from the trend that stresses conflict among the major powers, this article analyzes US-French collaboration on Lebanon since 2004. In addition to highlighting the significance of Lebanon to the US-French rapprochement in the aftermath of the Iraq War, this article addresses a number of questions regarding why France and the United States decided to work together in Lebanon and the implications of their close collaboration for the Lebanese internal situation and for US-French relations in the Middle East. We will first consider the ebbs and flows in US-French relations from the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States until the passage of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1559 (September 2004) which was, from the outset, a joint USFrench initiative. We will then look at how the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 drove France and the United States to intensify their collaboration on Lebanon. The third section examines how the two powers responded to the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah and subsequent developments in Lebanon that weakened their local partners. Fourth, we shed light on the relative merits of Realist and Liberal Internationalist explanations for the emergence of US-French collaboration. Finally, the conclusion suggests that Daniel Deudney's Republican Security Theory does a better job than Realism and Liberal Internationalism in explaining US-French collaboration in Lebanon.2 US-French relati ons from the attac ks of 9/11 until the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 The United States and France have been significant players on the Middle East scene for many decades. While their long and sustained engagement in the affairs of the region has led to a number of collisions,3 the overall relationship remained sufficiently amicable to permit collaboration whenever the two countries perceived their interests as converging. Thus, in the 1980s, the United States and France collaborated to deny Iran victory in its long war with Iraq; and in 1990, France, despite its initial push for a diplomatic solution, joined the military coalition that the United States formed to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and later took part in the UN-sanctioned surveillance operation that established no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.4 The 21st century brought opportunities for both conflict and cooperation. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the French government and media expressed solidarity with the United States. France's leading newspaper Le Monde carried the headline: Nous sommes tous Americains! …

North Korea detonated its first known nuclear device, a moderate-sized event in the northeastern corner of the Korean Peninsula, on 9 October 2006. A second one, several times more powerful, was set off nearby on 25 May 2009. Both were recorded at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by a modern broadband (0.03-30 Hz) network of seismographs deployed since 2004 along the Sino-Korean border, and by station MDJ due north of ground zero. Spanning a wide range of station azimuth (259°-11°), the near-regional (1.3°-3.3°) paths are all purely continental and away from continental margins, making the resulting data uniquely suited for assessing the capabilities of an out-country network to verify the compliance by North Korea with a future comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The mbLg magnitudes for the 2006 and 2009 nuclear explosions were determined anew, giving 4:32 0:13 and 4:86 0:13, respectively. We show that the MS-mbLgmethod correctly differenti- ates these nuclear explosions from natural earthquakes, although the differentiation was not achieved in studies based on published mbLg values. An analysis of the Pg∶Lg ratio, derived from recordings of the two nuclear tests and of four regional earthquakes selected for their comparable magnitudes (4:2 ≤ mb ≤ 4:8), reveals that the ratios associated with the explosion and earthquake populations showed surpris- ingly little overlap for a broad frequency range of 3 to 11 Hz. In principle, MS-mb can also be used to correctly identify the nuclear tests as explosions, but the mb measure- ment for such moderate-sized events is not as robust as the mbLg measurement, rendering this traditionally favored method less practical.

This article surveys China's policy towards nuclear non-proliferation regime and contests view that China has now completed transition from a challenger to an upholder of global non-proliferation regime. It argues that the learning curve hypothesis and bureaucratic politics and profit motives arguments provide only a partial explanation of China's shifting but ambiguous and contradictory policy towards non-proliferation. China has cleverly played the proliferation card by exploiting loopholes in nonproliferation regime and contradictions in major power relationships so as to serve its national security interests. The article examines factors that have led Beijing to disregard non-proliferation regime in past and might make it continue to do so in future. It also analyses changing Asian security environment and its impact on China's nonproliferation commitments in future. Introduction The global nuclear non-proliferation (NNP) regime is an outgrowth of steps taken during second half of twentieth century to halt horizontal spread of nuclear weapons. The NNP regime consists of several components. These are Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), founded in 1957; 1953 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) banning testing of nuclear weapons in atmosphere, outer space, or under water; 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which was extended indefinitely in 1995; London-based Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), formed in 1974, which requires IAEA safeguards on all of its participants' nuclear exports; 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) aimed at halting proliferation of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and other unmanned delivery systems; 1996 Wassenaar Arrangement (a successor to Cold War era's COCOM) covering conventional weapons and dual-use exports; and Zangger Committee which covers nuclear-related exports. T he 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which has yet to come into force, further constrains all states from conducting nuclear tests. In addition, nuclear weapons free zones (NWFZs) in Latin America, South Pacific, and Africa have further strengthened regime. In 1995, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) proposed establishment of a NWFZ in Southeast Asia, and in 1997 five Central Asian states issued Tashkent statement proposing a NWFZ for Central Asia. The overall record of NNP regime has been a mixture of success and failure. On positive side, five decades of international efforts at curbing spread of nuclear weapons have created a political and normative climate in which no state can easily declare its nuclear intentions. The unsuitability of nuclear weapons to most military situations also renders them useless. Moreover, a number of nuclearcapable states -- notably Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan -- have in recent years agreed to abandon strive for, or dismantle their nuclear weapons capabilities. In this sense, regime has been fairly successful. On negative side, campaign for nuclear disarmament appears to be failing just when success seemed at hand. Since mid1980s, regime has been undermined by emergence of new suppliers of nuclear technology and delivery systems, as well as by an increase in number of threshold or new nuclear weapons states (NWSs).. Apart from five declared NWSs (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China), and two new self-declared NWSs (India and Pakistan), several other nations (Israel, Japan, North Korea, and Iran) are widely believed to have made significant progress towards acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. The changes in international system and global nuclear balance of power since end of Cold War have thrown up new challenges and opportunities for NNP regime. …

INTRODUCTION In September 1996 the United Nations voted to adopt a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits any nuclear explosions, whether for weapons or peaceful purposes. The outlawing of nuclear weapons tests significantly limits a country's ability to develop or improve a nuclear weapon, so a CTBT is considered the keystone to stopping nuclear proliferation. The concept of a CTBT started with the Eisenhower administration, so the 1996 vote was truly historic. However, the UN vote to adopt the CTBT was not unanimous: 158 countries voted in favor and 3 (India, Bhutan, and Libya) opposed it, with 5 abstentions. On May 11, 1998, the one declared nuclear state which was opposed to the CTBT shocked the world by conducting a nudear test in the Rajasthan desert in northwestern India. Two days later India announced that it had conducted two further tests, and government spokesmen claimed that India needs nuclear weapons to prevent “military adventurism” by neighboring Pakistan. On May 28, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, announced...