The nonlocal stability of a thin current sheet against the electromagnetic ion-Weibel mode perturbation is investigated. The analysis is carried out for physical parameters typical of the near-Earth plasma sheet condition just prior to the substorm expansion onset. It is found that the ion-Weibel mode is stabilized in a Harris-like equilibrium profile with no velocity shear associated with the cross-field current, but positive growth of the instability is recovered once a finite velocity shear is incorporated into the equilibrium current profile and a sufficient, concomittant reduction of the current sheet thickness is imposed. This result is analogous to the case of the nonlocal modified-two-stream mode analysis which also indicates the importance of a velocity shear in the current sheet profile and the raising of the instability onset threshold from that predicted by the local theory. The parallelism suggests that, in general, nonlocal consideration of the stability of a thin current sheet predicts a higher onset threshold than the local stability analysis for a class of cross-field current instabilities. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996