#3 - RW 267
Moscow sticks to moratorium on nuclear tests

MOSCOW (AFP) Jul 31, 2003
Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged Thursday to continue respecting an international moratorium on nuclear arms testing, provided other nuclear powers did so too, the Interfax news agency reported. "Russia has agreed to several very serious international legal restrictions and has not conducted nuclear tests for many years," the president told nuclear experts at the country's top atomic research facility at Sarov, in the central Volga region.

"We intend to continue to adhere to our commitments, but on several conditions, the most important of which is similar adherence to these commitments from the other nuclear powers," Putin was quoted as saying.

The world's five heavyweight nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- signed a Comprehensive Test Ban Treatyin 1996.

However the parliaments of China and the United States have yet to ratify the treaty.

The United States has so far respected the moratorium on nuclear arms testing imposed in 1992 by US president George Bush, the father of the current US leader.

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