Test ban treaty vote to go forward

Tom Raum

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 1999 | 11:35 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said today that Democrats and the White House appear to have lost an effort to delay a losing vote on a global nuclear test-ban treaty.

"We're prepared to vote," Daschle declared, adding that rejection of the treaty would be an election issue.

He said neither he nor President Clinton is willing to make any further concessions to Senate conservatives -- even if it means the treaty will be rejected later today by a largely party-line vote.

Supporters concede they are far short of the 67 needed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

"There's a limit to what I can do and I've reached that limit," Daschle said.

Daschle blamed a "small group of senators on the far right" for preventing Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott from honoring a tentative deal reached Tuesday by the two Senate leaders.

Lott could still delay today's vote if he chose, Daschle indicated.

Since the Senate put aside debate on the treaty to take up farm legislation this morning, it would require a majority vote to go back to the treaty, Daschle said. He said Democrats would oppose that motion.

Daschle commented as Lott met with Republicans to see if a deal could still be found that would permit a delay. "There hasn't been much movement this morning" among Republicans, said Lott spokesman John Czwartacki.

While bipartisan support had appeared to be building in the Senate to delay the vote, finding a graceful exit from near-certain defeat of the pact remained elusive.

A small group of conservatives continued to threaten to block any effort at meeting Clinton's request that the vote be delayed.

On Monday, Clinton met one GOP demand -- requesting a delay in writing. Daschle on Tuesday offered a further pledge to Republicans: that he would not seek to reschedule a vote on the treaty during next year's presidential election season "barring extraordinary circumstances."

"The White House is not prepared to make any further concessions," and neither is he, Daschle told reporters.

"I'm prepared to accept the vote on this treaty. ... We'll let the chips fall where they may."

Furthermore, Daschle said, "We expect this will be an issue in the national elections next year if this isn't resolved."

In a speech, meanwhile, at the University of Maine, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the United States has no plan to conduct nuclear weapons tests, whatever the outcome of the Senate debate, and would discourage other nations from testing.

Albright said the administration also would continue to support the international monitoring system the treaty would establish to detect cheating.

Lott and Daschle reached an informal agreement Tuesday under which Daschle would pledge to the Senate that he would not seek to bring up the treaty again, barring extraordinary circumstances.

And Lott, in return, would join with Daschle in jointly proposing that the treaty be sent back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where it had languished for two years until Republican leaders suddenly sprung it for a quick vote.

But Lott later told reporters, "We don't have an agreement."

Four conservatives -- Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.; Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.; James Inhofe, R-Okla.; and Bob Smith, I-N.H. -- have continued to demand that the final vote go forward because they want to see the treaty defeated.

It is difficult to put off the vote because most ways of doing it would require unanimous consent.

The question was whether Lott would try to maneuver around the four and risk a rift with the party's right wing, as he did in 1997 when he broke ranks with other conservatives in supporting a chemical weapons ban treaty.

Meanwhile, two senior senators -- Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who supports the treaty, and John Warner of Virginia, who opposes -- were leading a bipartisan effort to build support for a delay.

"We ... believe in seeking a delay. We believe many colleagues are of a like view, irrespective of how they would vote at this point," they said in a joint letter to Lott.

In Senate debate, supporters of the treaty raised Tuesday's military coup in Pakistan as even more reason for the pact's eventual ratification.

"There's a struggle today within Pakistan ... about what they should do with their nuclear capacity," said Sen. Joseph Biden, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

By rejecting the treaty "we lose any leverage we have" over either Pakistan or its nuclear-armed neighbor, India, Biden said.

However, no one on either side of the issue -- including Biden -- gave the treaty any chance of ratification if a vote occurs today.

Outright rejection would be a major defeat for Clinton, who in 1996 became the first leader to sign the pact. Some 154 countries have signed it, but only 25 of the 44 nuclear-capable states have ratified it.