Global Security Newswire, 3 May 2011.

United States President Barack Obama has called on the US Senate to agree to a nuclear weapons-free zone in the South Pacific. The US is the only nuclear weapons state to have not ratified the Treaty of Rarotonga protocols, because it has until now refused to accept the 'no-nukes' policy promoted by New Zealand.

The treaty was signed by eight countries in 1985, after the South Pacific Forum (SPF) supported New Zealand's proposal to create a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region.

But though the US signed the protocols in 1996, it has so far refused to ratify them because it refuses to accept any limitation on the right of passage of US nuclear-powered vessels or naval vessels carrying nuclear weapons in the region.

Today the US Embassy announced that President Obama had sent the protocols for the South Pacific treaty, and a similar one in Africa, to the US Senate 'for its advice and consent' to ratification.

'The protocols to the treaties, once ratified, will extend the policy of the United States not to use or threaten use of nuclear weapons against regional zone parties that are members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in good standing with their non-proliferation obligations,' the embassy said.

The South Pacific was once a major testing ground for nuclear weapons. The US carried out 106 atmospheric and underwater tests, including 24 atmospheric nuclear tests on Australia's Christmas Island, before 1963.

The US and UK stopped all testing in the South Pacific after they signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963, but France established its own nuclear test site at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia and conducted a total of 193 tests in the region between 1966 and 1996.

In protest against a French decision to ignore an International Court of Justice ruling that it cease testing, New Zealand's third Labour government, led by Norman Kirk, sent two navy frigates, HMNZS Canterbury and Otago, into the test area, carrying Fraser Colman, the minister of immigration and mines.

In 1974, the French moved the tests underground.

On July 10, 1985, French agents bombed Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior protest vessel in Auckland, killing Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

The Rainbow Warrior bombing increased international outrage against nuclear testing in the region and the South Pacific forum negotiated a final treaty text relatively quickly.

The Treaty of Rarotonga came into force on December 11, 1986, after eight countries (New Zealand, Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu and Samoa) ratified it.

It prohibits the possession or testing of nuclear explosive devices even for peaceful purposes.

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