Differences emerge and persist
In 1995, the United States proposed a draft with similar language to China’s initial offer, although it included a waiver clause to prevent one State from holding the Treaty hostage. The proposal stipulated that the Treaty would enter into force after ratification by all States possessing nuclear or research reactors. However, after all the NWS ratified the Treaty, a majority of States Parties could elect to convene a conference to decide whether to waive this requirement.
Nonetheless, stating that the primary objective of the CTBT was nuclear non-proliferation, the United Kingdom said it could not support a waiver clause, and India rejected any special classification for the NWS. Meanwhile, France maintained that a test ban treaty without the ratification of all nuclear capable States was useless.
By 1996, clear divergences of opinion between delegations persisted over, among other issues, EIF provisions and Treaty supporters clenched their teeth as the deadline for negotiating the CTBT approached.
It was in January of 1996 that India introduced language stating that the Treaty shall enter into force only after all Parties commit to attaining total disarmament after ten years. Although insisting that the terms and target dates were negotiable, India clarified its position that the CTBT must be a disarmament Treaty.
The United States argued that the CTBT was an important step towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, and that attempting both a test ban and a total disarmament Treaty would ultimately lead to neither.
The EIF formula
With no consensus, or even a favoured option for EIF provisions, the Chairman of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), Jaap Ramaker, inserted a Canadian proposal in May 1996 to include those countries that hosted primary seismic stations or a radionuclide laboratory in the list. This formula would have succeeded in covering all five Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) as well as the three threshold States, but it met with resistance from many members of the CD. These States were fearful of disrupting the negotiations on the verification regime, which were nearing completion.
