[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 16 (Monday, February 10, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E191-E192]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   THE PRESIDENT IS CORRECT--NOW IS THE TIME TO APPROVE THE CHEMICAL 
                           WEAPONS CONVENTION

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, February 10, 1997

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, for at least two decades, Republican and 
Democratic administrations have worked to develop an international 
convention that will ban the production of chemical weapons and 
establish an international control regime to make it more difficult to 
produce these horrible weapons of mass destruction.
  Shortly after I became the chairman of the Subcommittee on 
International security, International Organizations and Human Rights of 
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in early 1993, President Clinton 
and Secretary of State Christopher submitted the Chemical Weapons 
Convention to the Senate for ratification. Since legislation to 
implement the convention requires the approval of both House of 
Congress, officials of the administration briefed me and members of my 
subcommittee on its provisions and the legislation necessary to 
implement that agreement.
  This is truly an agreement with broad bipartisan consensus. 
International negotiations were begun on this agreement during the 
Reagan administration. The complex negotiations were continued and then 
completed during the Bush administration. It was the Clinton 
administration which conducted the final review of the agreement and 
then submitted the completed agreement to the Senate for ratification, 
and completed final drafting of the implementing legislation which it 
then submitted to the House and Senate for adoption.
  Mr. Speaker, the convention and the implementing legislation have 
been before the Congress now for almost 4 years. The time has come for 
ratification of the agreement and the adoption of legislation to 
implement it. It is important, Mr. Speaker, that we move to complete 
this important international convention. The international agreement 
and the implementing legislation were worked out with the strong 
support and in close consultation with chemical manufacturers in the 
United States. The industry understands that it has a very strong 
interest in the adoption of the convention and the implementing 
legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge our colleagues in the other body to act 
responsibly, to move quickly and decisively to ratify this important 
agreement, and I urge my colleagues in this House to move quickly to 
adopt the implementing legislation. The requisite number of countries 
have already ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention--it will go into 
effect with or without the participation of the United States in April 
of this years. As President Clinton said in his excellent State of the 
Union Address earlier this week, it is essential that the United States 
ratify this agreement before it goes into effect so that we will be 
full and active participants in establishing the international system 
that will be responsible for enforcing the convention.
  It is unfortunate when politics gets in the way of good policy, and I 
fear that this may be happening in the other body. There is broad 
bipartisan support and broad expert agreement upon the merits of this 
agreement. In this regard, I call to the attention of my colleagues an 
opinion article on the Chemical Weapons Convention that appeared in the 
Washington Post, January 6, 1997 by retired Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., the 
former Chief of Naval Operations, 1970-74. Mr. Speaker I ask that 
Admiral Zumwalt's article be placed in the Record, and I urge my 
colleagues to give it careful and thoughtful attention. Admiral 
Zumwalt, who has always had the security interests of the United States 
as the highest priority, makes an exceptionally strong case for quick 
approval of the convention.

                [From the Washington Post, Jan. 6, 1997]

                    A Needless Risk for U.S. Troops

                         (By E.R. Zumwalt, Jr.)

       It has been more than 80 years since poison gas was first 
     used in modern warfare--in April 1915 during the first year 
     of World War I. It is long past time to do something about 
     such weapons.
       I am not a dove. As a young naval officer in 1945, I 
     supported the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. As chief 
     of naval operations two decades ago, I pressed for 
     substantially higher military spending than the nation's 
     political leadership was willing to grant. After retiring 
     from the Navy, I helped lead the opposition to the SALT II 
     treaty because I was convinced it would give the Soviet Union 
     a strategic advantage.
       Now the Senate is considering whether to approve the 
     Chemical Weapons Convention. This is a worldwide treaty, 
     negotiated by the Reagan administration and signed by the 
     Bush administration. It bans the development, production, 
     possession, transfer and use of chemical weapons. Senate 
     opposition to ratification is led by some with whom I often 
     agree. But in this case, I believe they do a grave disservice 
     to America's men and women in uniform.
       To a Third World leader indifferent to the health of his 
     own troops and seeking to cause large-scale pain and death 
     for its own sake, chemical weapons have a certain attraction. 
     They don't require the advanced technology needed to build 
     nuclear weapons. Nor do they require the educated populace 
     needed to create a modern conventional military. But they 
     cannot give an inferior force a war-winning capability. In 
     the Persian Gulf war, the threat of our uncompromising 
     retaliation with conventional weapons deterred Saddam 
     Hussein from using his chemical arsenal against us.
       Next time, our adversary may be more berserk than Saddam, 
     and deterrence may fail. If that happens, our retaliation 
     will be decisive, devastating--and no help to the young 
     American men and women coming home dead or bearing grievous 
     chemical injuries. What will help is a treaty removing huge 
     quantities of chemical weapons that could otherwise be used 
     against us.
       Militarily, this treaty will make us stronger. During the 
     Bush administration, our nation's military and political 
     leadership decided to retire our chemical weapons. This wise 
     move was not made because of treaties. Rather, it was based 
     on the fact that chemical weapons are not useful for us.
       Politically and diplomatically, the barriers against their 
     use by a First World country are massive. Militarily, they 
     are risky and unpredictable to use, difficult and dangerous 
     to store. They serve no purpose that can't be met by our 
     overwhelming conventional forces.
       So the United States has no deployed chemical weapons today 
     and will have none in the future. But the same is not true of 
     our potential adversaries. More than a score of nations now 
     seeks or possesses chemical weapons. Some are rogue states 
     with which we may some day clash.
       This treaty is entirely about eliminating other people's 
     weapons--weapons that may some day be used against Americans. 
     For the American military, U.S. ratification of the Chemical 
     Weapons Convention is high gain and low or no pain. In that 
     light, I find it astonishing that any American opposes 
     ratification.
       Opponents argue that the treaty isn't perfect: Verification 
     isn't absolute, forms must be filled out, not every nation 
     will join at

[[Page E192]]

     first and so forth. This is unpersuasive. Nothing in the real 
     world is perfect. If the U.S. Navy had refused to buy any 
     weapon unless it worked perfectly every time, we would have 
     bought nothing and now would be disarmed. The question is not 
     how this treaty compares with perfection. The question is not 
     how this treaty compares with perfection. The question is how 
     U.S. ratification compares with its absence.
       If we refuse to ratify, some governments will use our 
     refusal as an excuse to keep their chemical weapons. 
     Worldwide availability of chemical weapons will be higher, 
     and we will know less about other countries' chemical 
     activities. The diplomatic credibility of our threat of 
     retaliation against anyone who uses chemical weapons on our 
     troops will be undermined by our lack of ``clean hands.'' At 
     the bottom line, our failure to ratify will substantially 
     increase the risk of a chemical attack against American 
     service personnel.
       If such attack occurs, the news reports of its victims in 
     our military hospitals will of course produce rapid 
     ratification of the treaty and rapid replacement of senators 
     who enabled the horror by opposing ratification. But for the 
     victims, it will be too late.
       Every man and woman who puts on a U.S. military uniform 
     faces possible injury or death in the national interest. They 
     don't complain; risk is part of their job description. But it 
     is also part of the job description of every U.S. senator to 
     see that this risk not be increased unnecessarily.

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