U.S. won't stop subcritical nuclear testing, adviser says

Japan Policy & Politics, Jan 17, 2000

TOKYO, Jan. 13 Kyodo

The United States will continue carrying out subcritical nuclear tests under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to check nonnuclear parts of weapons, a senior U.S. State Department adviser said Thursday.

"We aren't proceeding to develop new kinds of warheads but merely maintaining a smaller stockpile...it was understood and permitted under the treaty," John Holum, senior adviser on arms control and international security, said during an interactive broadcast on the U.S. government-run television station Worldnet.

The special program on "U.S. policy on nuclear proliferation" was broadcast via a satellite and shown in designated studios in Canberra, Beijing, Tokyo and Ulan Bator, as well as Washington.

Holum said there is a smaller role for nuclear weapons, and the size of arsenal is coming down and the number of different kinds of weapons is being reduced.

Asked what he thinks of strong opposition in Japan to subcritical nuclear testing, Holum said the tests are not for the purpose of designing new weapons, or of building more weapons.

"(They are) simply for the purpose of making sure that those remaining with smaller roles and in smaller numbers are safe and reliable," he said.

"In the 1960s, there were many estimates or projections that there could be 20 or 30 nuclear weapons states by now," he said.

Holum said that though the technology and nuclear materials are more widely available now, with a lot of nuclear reactors around the world, the reason there are not more nuclear weapons is mainly because of the nonproliferation treaty.

"This regime and (its) safeguards have established a very strong global consensus against the spread of nuclear weapons."

Asked about the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, he said, "What concerns me is the danger to the regime that has been posed by the tests in South Asia. It seems to me that is the first major, recent step in the opposite direction, away from this global standard."

"So a very important part of our collective effort to reinforce the nonproliferation treaty, it seems to me, has to be to address that very real and dangerous situation in South Asia."

He also said any country that launches an attack on the U.S. must know they would suffer overwhelming damage in return, and the U.S. has not abandoned deterrence or prevention as a means of dealing with weapons of mass destruction.

Referring to the possibility of a North Korean attack on the U.S., he said, "We don't want to be put in a position where we have to either abandon our alliance relationship with South Korea or have a major city in the United States threatened with weapons of mass destruction."

"That's a kind of question that I think we can and should try to avoid by discussing, considering, a limited national missile defense," Holum said.