
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995                   TAG: 9502140063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHINA WON'T SIGN NUCLEAR FUEL BAN

The Clinton administration, trying to bolster its campaign to prevent the spread of nuclear arms, hopes to persuade the four other nuclear powers to end production of a key component of the weapons.

A senior administration official said Russia, Britain and France have agreed to join the United States in announcing that they will no longer produce weapon-grade plutonium and uranium. The announcement is to come before the April 17 start of an international conference to renew the 25-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But China has not yet agreed to go along.

With the United States and Russia dismantling much of their nuclear arsenals under recently ratified arms control treaties, such an agreement would have little practical effect because there is a substantial surplus of recyclable material that can provide weapon fuel. But U.S. officials believe that it could have a huge symbolic impact.

A small but determined group of non-nuclear countries is resisting U.S. efforts to make the treaty permanent, because they say it discriminates against countries that did not possess atomic weaponry when the pact took effect in 1970. The treaty bans all non-nuclear countries as of that date from joining the exclusive nuclear club.

U.S. officials hope that an agreement by the nuclear powers to stop producing bomb fuel will help persuade the holdouts to go along.

Administration strategists can count on fewer than 70 of the 86 votes needed to make the treaty permanent. Officials say 40 or 50 other nations are leaning toward approval, enough to assure passage. With Argentina's ratification effective Friday, 171 nations and Taiwan are signatories to the treaty.

A hard-core group of 20 or so countries, including Nigeria, Indonesia, Mexico and Egypt, are against making the pact permanent, although U.S. officials say most of them appear willing to approve extension for a set period of years. When first approved, the pact had a 25-year term.

Most of the holdouts object to the exclusive rights granted to the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. But Arab states, led by Egypt, also oppose indefinite extension of the pact unless Israel agrees to sign and place its nuclear program under international inspection.

Israel, which has steadfastly refused to sign, is widely believed to possess a substantial number of nuclear bombs. Although the government has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, it jailed a former nuclear technician for asserting that its arsenal included at least 100 atomic warheads.

by CNB