WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 (UPI) Three former high-profile White House aides argued that the U.S. Senate should delay its vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former undersecretary of defense John Deutch stated on the op-ed page of Wednesday's Washington Post that they "are no fans of the CTBT" but want the vote postponed because the United States needs to learn more about issues such as nuclear programs in Russia, China, India and Pakistan.

The CTBT purports to halt nuclear proliferation. Opponents argue that the treaty is no guarantee that countries that do not sign on will not develop nuclear weapons.

Kissinger, Scowcroft and Deutch said, Senate ratification of the treaty "is unlikely to have any significant impact" on other countries' decision to agree to the treaty.

"For example," they wrote, "no serious person should believe that rogue nations such as Iran or Iraq will give up their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons if only the United States ratifies the CTBT."

The former officials wrote that the United States must continue to rely on nuclear devices as a deterrent against attack and to be certain the weapons work, they must be tested.

They conclude, "In light of uncertainty, and in the absence of any compelling reasons for early ratification, it is unwise to take actions now that constrain this or future presidents' choices about how best to pursue our nonproliferation and other national security goals while maintaining the effectiveness and credibility of our nuclear deterrent."

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported Wednesday that 32 Nobel laureates in physics have urged the Senate to approve the CTBT, calling it "central to future efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons."

The laureates made their plea in a letter Tuesday sent to every senator, which was conveyted by the American Physical Society.

"To line up this many physics Nobel laureates is unprecedented," Dr. Robert L. Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland who directs the group's Washington office, told the Times.

Jerome I. Friedman, the president of the physics group, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an organizer of the letter, said the test ban "is important for the future of humankind, and therefore has to be taken extremely seriously."