Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBT), said the station would form part of the worldwide network of monitoring stations.

The network is being built to help enforce the CTBT, which bans all nuclear explosions for military or civilian purposes, and is seen as a major step towards the curtailment of nuclear weapons, production and eventual disarmament.

Toth told the official Bernama news agency that 321 stations operating in 89 countries used a range of technology including seismology and infrasound to track any violations of the treaty.

There was growing interest from other Asian countries in obtaining the data, which could also be used to help provide tsunami warnings, he said.

"For most of the countries, except some really big countries, this is totally a new pool of information, a global information as the data may be relevant for tsunami warning purposes."

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