BRITAIN, RUSSIA, CHINA, PAKISTAN MUST COMPROMISE OR NUCLEAR TEST BAN MAY FAIL: GREENPEACE:

commitment made at Moscow Nuclear Safety Summit.

NAGASAKI, June 28th, 1996:

Greenpeace activists holding a ceremony of remembrance for atomic bomb victims in Nagasaki on the final day of the nuclear test ban talks in Geneva made a plea for the governments of Britain, Russia, China, and Pakistan to cease blocking agreement on the ban.

In a statement released after the ceremony at Nagasaki's Peace Park, Greenpeace said that 'the memory of the victims of nuclear weapons should be honoured by all countries agreeing to the ban without reservations'.

The final draft text of the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is expected to be presented by the Chairman of the negotiations in Geneva later today. It is expected that the Chairman, Ambassador Ramaker of the Netherlands, will state that negotiations are closed and request nations to sign the treaty without further changes.

Fears have grown this week, however, that the hardline demand for veto power over the treaty by Britain, Russia, Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, China, could wreck the treaty. Despite opposition from many other countries, led by Canada and Australia, the four have not indicated that they will back off before the June 28 deadline passes.

"A ban on all nuclear tests is the minimum first step to nuclear disarmament", said John Willis of Greenpeace Japan. "Right now a very small number of holdouts who either have or could soon have nuclear weapons, are blocking this first step. This does not appear to be a bargaining tactic, but a callous bid to preserve their own nuclear weapons by halting progress towards disarmament."

Attachment: COMMENTS ON THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN IN NAGASAKI ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE CTBT TALKS

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: John Willis/Noriko Oyama, Greenpeace Japan mobile: 030 340 5552 or 030 470 7884

COMMENTS ON THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN IN NAGASAKI ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE CTBT TALKS GREENPEACE JAPAN 28 JUNE 1995

Today is the final deadline for the completion of a CTBT, which comes 51 years after the nuclear attack which destroyed this city.

Today in Geneva, we understand that the Chairman of the negotiations will put forward a final text of a treaty, and request that all nations sign it and ratify it.

Greenpeace believes that this text -- the evolution of which we have been following in detail for six months -- will be imperfect and will contain weaknesses that need attention. However, we also believe that extending the deadline and delaying the final draft treaty would allow certain nations to undermine a test ban and possibly even destroy it completely.

The nations which are of greatest concern are the UNITED KINGDOM, RUSSIA, PAKISTAN, and CHINA. These states are insisting (with various degrees of inflexibility) that a fixed list of specific nations must ratify the CTBT before it can become binding international law. These nations would include all the recognised nuclear weapons states (FRANCE, UK, USA, RUSSIA, and CHINA), the three recognised 'threshold' states (INDIA, PAKISTAN, ISRAEL), plus a further group of some 29 nations which have the technical means to monitor nuclear testing.

This proposal would in effect give an open-ended veto to 37 states, including all those who either have or are suspected of having nuclear weapons, over a ban on testing. The unwillingness to compromise by the four countries proposing this veto formula seriously calls into question their good faith and raises the distinct possibility that they actually seek to wreck the test ban. These nations are all either nuclear-armed, our could be in a short time-frame, and thus their position on this issue appears to be a cynical bid to protect their nuclear weapons from the disarmament process.

For this reason, Greenpeace concludes that negotiations on the CTBT must come to a close now, and that the final text as presented today by the Chairman be signed and ratified by all states, as is. Imperfections are not desirable, but the alternative may be that we allow the opponents of a true comprehensive test ban to advance their own agenda, which would be much worse for the future of our world.

Bearing in mind that nuclear weapons are designed, built, and tested for one purpose, which is to kill, we call on all countries to honour the victims of nuclear arms by agreeing to the nuclear test ban now, without reservations.