Libya Inks Nuke Treaty

Libya has ratified the nuclear test ban treaty, a U.N. agency said Wednesday, less than three weeks after the North African country publicly renounced its weapons of mass destruction.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is an agreement the United States has signed, but not ratified.

Libya's nuclear program was nowhere near producing a weapon, according to the International Atomic Energy Administration.

Still, the announcement by the U.N. agency overseeing the agreement appeared to be a further sign of commitment by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to give up nuclear weapons activities.

The Vienna-based agency — known as the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organization — said in a statement that in ratifying the pact, Libya agreed to host a monitoring station at Misratah. That would be part of a network of 337 stations being set up to verify compliance with terms of the treaty.

Libya announced Dec. 19 that it was giving up its weapons of mass destruction after months of secret talks with the United States and Britain. It said then it would sign the test ban treaty and become a party to the convention prohibiting chemical weapons.

The United States and Britain plan to send experts to Libya this month to analyze the extent of Libya's nuclear program and its quest for biological and chemical weapons as well as modern missiles.

Top Bush administration officials are convinced the programs are far more extensive than outlined by the IAEA and said this week that the United States and Britain would pursue their own joint program to uncover Libya's operation and hold Gadhafi to his promise to uproot development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as well as potent missiles.

The director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said he does not want American or British help on the ground in Libya. But senior American officials confirmed an active U.S. and British role and said Libya's programs were far more extensive than the U.N. agency had disclosed.

Libya's exact motives for renouncing weapons of mass destruction are hotly debated.

Bush administration officials say Libya's move vindicates the war in Iraq. They believe Gadhafi was convinced by the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein that the U.S. was serious about using force to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. officials also point to the seizure in October of an illegal shipment of thousands of parts of uranium-enrichment equipment bound for Libya. That seizure sealed Gadhafi's decision to dismantle his nuclear weapons program, a U.S. official said.

Others note that Gadhafi had been pursuing better relations with the west for years — turning over two intelligence agents for trial in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, agreeing to a settlement with families of the Lockerbie victims, and intervening in hostage crises in the Philippines.

They also note that with more than 100,000 American troops on duty in Iraq, thousands pursuing Taliban remnants in Afghanistan and still others in South Korea ready for trouble with North Korea, the United States posed little threat to Libya.