NEW DELHI, APRIL 28: Top former diplomats and strategic experts have termed as “factually incorrect” BJP leader L K Advani’s statement that no country — including the US — has given it in writing that they will not conduct nuclear tests. All five nuclear powers, they point out, have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and three of them have got it ratified from their legislatures.

“No country can... has any other country said that hereafter we will have no further tests? Has (the) US given any such undertaking, has any other country which has so much nuclear weaponry said it in writing? It is one thing to voluntarily give it up, but to say it in writing as part of a treaty is another.”

Arundhati Ghose, India’s former permanent representative to the UN during the CTBT negotiations, said: “This is factually incorrect. All five nuclear weapon states have signed the CTBT. Russia, the UK and France have ratified it. The US, China and Israel have also signed it, but they haven’t ratified it.”

According to the Vienna Convention of agreements, Ghose said: “If a country has signed a treaty but hasn’t ratified it, it is still bound by the spirit of the treaty, unless it withdraws from the treaty as a signatory.”

K Subrahmanyam, noted strategic analyst who had been convener of the National Security Council Advisory Board in the BJP-led government, also pointed out that 178 nations had signed the CTBT, “including three of the nuclear weapon states which have ratified it”.

“There is a good chance that the next US President may try to get the treaty ratified,” Subrahmanyam added. “That is what both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have said so far during their presidential campaign. But it depends on the kind of majority they get, because to reverse the decision to not ratify the CTBT, both Houses in the US will have to pass it by a two-third majority.”

Former foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh also differed with Advani, pointing out: “There is no explicit undertaking in the 123 Agreement that India will not conduct further tests. In fact, it gives circumstantial justification to look into the nuclear tests (in case of such an eventuality).”

Moreover, Mansingh, who has also been ambassador to the US and UK, said: “India’s inherent right to test cannot be taken away with a bilateral agreement with any country.”