VIENNA, DEC. 2. At the conclusion of its Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) meeting held here recently, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) expressed hope that the next U.S. Government would take up the CTBT ratification issue and see it through. The present U.S. Government has assured CTBTO its full contribution for the year 2001. CTBTO is busy completing its International Monitoring System (IMS) and continues in its efforts to persuade the remaining 14 States of the Article XIV States, including India, to sign and ratify.

The Mexican Ambassador, Ms. Olga Pellicer, the current PrepCom chairperson, told the press that while ratification by the remaining States in Article XIV list of 44 States would bring greater pressure on the U.S. to ratify earlier, CTBTO was making all efforts through powerful member-States of the E.U. and Japan. Persuasion, it is hoped, will help U.S. Republican Senators and disarmament officials to ratify soon. When asked about the 39 per cent fund cut by the U.S. Senate for non-proliferation and CTBTO, as announced in the State Department Report of August this year, Dr. Wolfgang Hoffmann, CTBTO chief, said the CTBTO had not been affected so far. On the contrary, the U.S. had paid in full for the year 2000 and promised its full assessed contribution of 25 per cent of the CTBTO's budget for 2001. Over 95 per cent of CTBTO's budget had already been paid by member-States, something even established U.N. agencies can hardly dream of.

France, Mexico and Japan are trying to persuade U.S. Senators towards the old bipartisan joint approach on the CTBT. To remove all doubts on the CTBT's effectiveness, a report by an Independent Commission comprised of international specialists on the Verifiability of CTBT, was released here by the London-based NGO - VERTIC (Verification Research, Training and Information Centre). The report warned, ``Any State contemplating a decoupled test would face a verification gauntlet.'' It reaches the conclusion that the expanded global verification capabilities ``constitute a complex and constantly evolving verification gauntlet, which any potential violator will have to confront - together they will serve as a powerful deterrent.'' The experts also recommended that the global community should encourage an ``open exchange of data between the IMS and the global scientific community''.

A question was raised on the legality of China's alleged plans, as reported by Telegraph's Beijing correspondent, to use nuclear explosions to bore a huge canal through the gigantic Himalayan rocks on the pre-Brahmaputra part of the river after year 2006. China wants to divert huge water quantities from Tibetan Himalayas to arid areas of mainland China. The idea is to construct the world's biggest hydroelectric-irrigation project generating 38 million kilowatts electricity. It seems Russia had used such explosions in the past before signing the CTBT, causing environmental damages. The US had desisted doing it for environmental reasons.