Palau ratifies nuclear test ban treaty

VIENNA, Aug 7 (Reuters) The tiny Pacific island of Palau, which hosts a monitoring station, has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, raising to 139 the number of full member states, officials said today.

The CTBT's administering organisation, based in Vienna, said Palau's ''infrasound'' station would be part of a global alarm system being built to help ensure compliance with the treaty.

The treaty, which prohibits all nuclear explosions, will not take formal effect before it is ratified by all 44 states listed in an annex that took part in the 1996 treaty negotiations and have nuclear power or research reactors.

Thirty-four of the 44 have both signed and ratified the pact, including nuclear arms powers Russia, Britain and France.

The 10 laggards are Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, India, Pakistan, China and the United States.

The last five are declared nuclear weapons states, while Israel is widely assumed to be one but never confirmed this.

Iran denies Western suspicions that it is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons, insisting its uranium enrichment programme is for electricity generation only.

Some 337 CTBT stations are planned to monitor the atmosphere, oceans and underground worldwide for any nuclear explosions. More than 200 facilities already send data to the CTBT organisation's data centre in the Austrian capital.

REUTERS AE MSJ RAI2100