Politics

Nuclear Test Ban Fallout

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 8, 1999 / 1:39 PM EDT / CBS

President Clinton used some of his strongest language yet Thursday to denounce the Senate's defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts reports.

He called it "reckless partisanship," a move that turned its back on 50 years of American leadership against the spread of nuclear weapons. He vowed to continue the fight.

On a largely party line vote, the Senate defeated the treaty late Wednesday, 51-48 - representing a major defeat for Mr. Clinton, who had made the 154-nation treaty a major second-term initiative.

This marks the first time the Senate has ever rejected an arms control treaty and the first time any treaty had been rejected since an unpopular agreement dealing with airline overflight rights and exposure to international lawsuits was rejected in 1983.

Only four Senate Republicans voted for the treaty. The United States thus became the first nuclear power to specifically reject the agreement on ending nuclear weapons testing.

The president said the Senate action was a dangerous move toward isolationism -- a signal that America increasingly cares only about itself. China called the rejection "deeply worrying"; Russia accused the U.S. of undermining world security.


Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle

"I call on Russia, China, Britain, France and all other countries to continue to refrain from testing," Mr. Clinton said. "When all is said and done, I have no doubt that the United States will ratify this treaty."

Senate Republicans reject the charge that they played politics, and say the treaty simply did not guarantee America's future security. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said, "I know he's disappointed and maybe his feelings hurt a little bit here, but ya know, let's move on. You don't win 'em all Mr. President."

Regardless of the process at work in the Senate, the treaty is all politics now. Barely 24 hours after its defeat, Vice President Al Gore made it a campaign issue. "This vote goes against the tide of history," the presidential candidate said in a new ad airing later this week in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationally on CNN. "I believe in my heart this vote does not speak for the American people."

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Republicans would "pay a price for this. Unfortunately the country and the world are going to pay a much higher price."

Mr. Clinton also used his news conference to vent his frustrations on the current stalemate over the budget. A temporary measure to keep government functioning runs out next Thursday, and 7 of 13 spnding bills have not yet crossed his desk in a form he will sign.

"They should stop playing politics, stop playing games, start making the necessary tough choices," he said. "Instead, we have the Republicans lurching from one unworkable idea to the next."

The president will most likely give the Republicans a one-week extension to finish their work on the spending budgets. No one wants to see the government shut down, but Mr. Clinton has said the process can't go on forever.

As for the test ban treaty, on Thursday the President heard just what he'd feared. Pakistan's opposition party said that after the Senate's actions, neither Pakistan nor India were likely to sign away their right to test nuclear weapons.

Although the treaty was signed by 154 nations, including the United States, it has been ratified by only 26 of the 44 nuclear-capable states that must approve it to put it into force.