CTBTO invites India to be an observer at meetings

The hindu
Dated: may 13, 2019

Lassina Zerbo, the executive secretary of CTBTO, says giving India the opportunity to join as an observer could be a good starting point. The executive secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), Lassina Zerbo, has invited India to be an observer in the CTBT.

“I’m not asking India to ratify [the treaty] — I know that is not possible now — but I think giving India the opportunity to join as an observer could be a good starting point,” he said. He was speaking to a group of Indian journalists at the CTBTO in Vienna.

He spoke of the changes in the organisation, which has moved from being more confined in CTBT and International Monitoring System. “[This is] because we are making the data available to people — which is not traditional. This wasn’t possible at the beginning of the organisation. We had what was called the ‘task leader for data confidentiality’, which does not exist any more,” he said.

Being an observer would give India access to data from the International Monitoring System — a network which when complete will consist of 337 facilities (321 monitoring stations and 16 radionuclide labs) located in 89 countries. This system can detect even small nuclear explosions using seismology, hydroacoustics, infrasound and radionuclide technology.

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