Armenia ratifies Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Armenia/Andorra ratify Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 10:12 am

Vienna, 17 July 2006: Armenia has deposited its instrument of
ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)
with the United Nations Secretary-General on 12 July 2006, bringing
the total number of ratifications to 133. The number of ratifying
States in the Eastern Europe geographical region now stands at 20.

Armenia hosts one International Monitoring System (IMS) facility,
an auxiliary seismic station at Garni. The station forms part of
the global network of 337 IMS monitoring facilities which is being
established under the terms of the CTBT to verify compliance with
the terms of the Treaty. The monitoring facilities transmit data via
satellite to the International Data Centre (IDC) in Vienna, where
the data are used to detect, locate and characterize events. These
data and IDC products are made available to the States Signatories
for final analysis.

The CTBT bans any nuclear weapons test explosion or any other nuclear
explosion. Drafted at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and
adopted by the General Assembly on 10 September 1996, the Treaty
was opened for signature on 24 September 1996 at the United Nations
headquarters in New York.

To enter into force, the CTBT must be signed and ratified by the
44 States listed in Annex 2 to the Treaty. These States formally
participated in the work of the 1996 session of the Conference on
Disarmament and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at that
time. To date, 34 of the Annex 2 States have ratified the Treaty.