UN General Assembly
1996

constant prayer but a distant hope, as many of us in the non-nuclear world were filled with foreboding that our world was on the brink of nuclear extinction. In such a horrific scenario, common sense began to prevail, and that common sense, buoyed by the initiatives of this important Organization, the United Nations, led to the conclusion of several important but limited treaties and to the Conference on Disarmament. Those initiatives 12 were ultimately crowned with success when, on 10 September 1996, in an extended fiftieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, the vast majority of the world’s nations adopted the text of a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the CTBT. In the context of the South Pacific region, with the adoption of the CTBT, the signature by the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France of the Protocols to the South Pacific Nuclear-Free-Zone Treaty — the Treaty of Rarotonga — and the ratification by France of the Protocols, my country and the countries of the region