Comprehensive nuclear-test ban declared 'highest priority.' (First Committee on Disarmament and International Security report acted on by UN General Assembly).

Conclusion of a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty was a "task of the highest priority", the General Assembly declared on 12 December.

Acting on the recommendation of its First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), the Assembly, by resolution 50/65, called upon all States participating in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament--the world's sole multilateral disarmament body--particularly the nuclear-weapons States, to conclude such a treaty, so as to enable its signature by the outset of the Assembly's fifty-first session.

In strongly deploring "all current nuclear testing", the Assembly strongly urged (50/70 A) its "immediate cessation" and called (50/70 C) for the "determined pursuit by nuclear-weapon States of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons".

A total of 46 resolutions--22 without a vote--and three decisions had been approved by the First Committee, as it continued to review disarmament and international security matters in the post-cold-war era.

In noting with satisfaction (50/68) that in the Conference on Disarmament there was "no objection, in principle", to the idea of an international convention to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, the Assembly appealed for an "early agreement on a common approach and, in particular, on a common formula that could be included in an international instrument of a legally binding character".

First Committee Chairman Luvsangiin Erdenechuluun of Mongolia on 21 November declared that, amidst a "great emotional outcry" over nuclear non-proliferation issues and "other recent developments", the conclusion of a comprehensive test-ban treaty by 1996 had been "supported by an overwhelming majority of delegations", he stated.

Also, three nuclear-weapon States--France, the United Kingdom and the United States--had announced their intention to sign and ratify, early in 1996, additional protocols to the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga).

Nuclear-weapon-free zones

The African Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone Treaty (the Pelindaba Treaty)--adopted at the June 1995 Addis Ababa summit session of the Organization of African Unity--was hailed (50/78) as an "event of historic significance in the efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons". At the same time, the...