[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 10, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5433-S5437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




THE COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY AND THE 34TH ANNIVERSARY OF PRESIDENT 
            KENNEDY'S CALL FOR THE VIGOROUS PURSUIT OF PEACE

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I take the floor today with a couple of my 
colleagues to note a very important anniversary.
  Mr. President, 34 years ago today, on June 10, 1963, President John 
F. Kennedy delivered a historic address at American University here in 
Washington, DC, regarding the need for the vigorous pursuit of peace. 
He declared that the United States has a critical interest in limiting 
the testing of nuclear weapons. We wanted to mark that occasion today 
by talking about the need to continue that progress and to bring to 
completion President Kennedy's dream and goal of the Comprehensive Test 
Ban Treaty.
  I yield at this time to my colleague from Illinois for his unanimous-
consent request and for any comments he wants to make.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Thank you Mr. President.


                         Privilege Of The Floor

  I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to 
the following members of my staff, Thomas Faletti and Robin Gaul during 
the pendency of this debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I want to thank my colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, 
for reminding us of this important and historic anniversary. President 
John Kennedy's speech to American University in 1963, really I think 
demonstrated a vision of the future which no one believed at the time 
was really within our reach. We expect leaders in America to challenge 
us, to think ahead, and to think of a different world, a better world. 
Certainly President Kennedy did that at American University.
  In the midst of the cold war, when it was starting to heat up with 
nuclear missiles being built at great expense in the Soviet Union and 
the United States, President Kennedy challenged the United States to 
think of the vision of a world that was a world of peace, a world where 
the leaders in countries like the United States and Russia would be 
focusing their resources on good and positive things rather than 
weapons of mass destruction.
  We have tried through the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to reach a 
milestone on the road to the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This 
treaty prohibits all nuclear weapons test explosions or other nuclear 
explosions anywhere in the world.
  It is verifiable. We have a global network of monitoring facilities 
and onsite inspections to make sure that each country lives up to its 
terms.
  President Bush, obviously a Republican leader, initiated a test 
moratorium in October 1992. President Clinton continued it, and then 
signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last year, along with 125 
other world leaders. It has been endorsed by the United Nations. Now it 
must be ratified by the United States. The Senate must put its approval 
on this notion that we are going to eliminate nuclear weapons testing 
as part of a global plan to bring real peace to this world. Forty-three 
other nuclear-capable countries must face that same responsibility.
  Why should we do this at this point in our history? Are we not making 
enough progress? Do we really need this? I think the answers to these 
questions demonstrate why we are here on the floor speaking to this 
issue. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would curb nuclear weapons 
proliferation worldwide.

  What does it mean? Not just those nations currently in possession of 
nuclear weapons, but those that dream--unfortunately dream--of being 
nuclear powers, they would be held back, too. Our monitoring devices in 
the test ban treaty will be at least a discouragement, if not a 
prohibition against their own nuclear testing to become nuclear powers, 
to join in some nuclear arms race at a new level different from the 
cold war.
  There is another aspect of this that is so troubling. Fully $1 out of 
every $3 we spend each year now in the United States on what we call 
the nuclear weapons program is money spent to clean up the mess, the 
environmental degradation that is left over from our nuclear program. 
If we stopped the testing and put a halt to the construction of these 
weapons, we are going to

[[Page S5434]]

protect our environment, and future generations will certainly be happy 
to hear that. It saves taxpayer money. And, it is supported by a 
majority of Americans. In fact, over 80 percent of the American people 
think it is time for us to do this.
  The U.S. nuclear arsenal has consumed about a quarter to a third of 
all of our defense spending since World War II. I will not recount all 
the dollars involved; and I am sure my colleagues will during the 
course of this debate. But, we have put ample resources in this 
program. We must be reminded over and over again of the words of 
President Dwight Eisenhower, no dove, our leader in World War II, who 
stood up and reminded us that every dollar spent on weaponry, every 
dollar spent in this case on nuclear weaponry, is a dollar not spent on 
the education of a child, on nutrition for a child at risk. These are 
things which should be constant reminders of the need to resume this 
debate.
  Despite the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 
the United States currently spends at least $33 billion a year on 
nuclear weapons and weapons-related activity--about 13 percent of our 
defense budget. These costs continue even though no new warheads or 
bombs have been built since July 1990.
  Nuclear weapons testing has stopped since September 1992. And the 
size of the nuclear stockpile, because of negotiations, has gone down 
dramatically; yet, still $33 billion a year right up on the cash 
register out of the taxpayers' pockets into a nuclear program. And for 
what? Unfortunately, a third of it, as I said, is used for 
environmental cleanup. And that should be done. But so much more is 
being used to maintain and upgrade existing weapons and retain the 
capability to produce new ones.
  Let us realize the vision of President Kennedy, a vision which 34 
years ago challenged Americans to think beyond the current cold war in 
those days to the future, to a future free of nuclear weapons to a more 
peaceful world.
  I am happy to join with my colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, on 
the floor. And I thank him for reminding us of a commitment made of a 
vision expressed 34 years ago. It is time for this test ban treaty to 
be ratified by the United States for a safer world, for ourselves and 
our children.
  I yield back to the Senator from Iowa.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank my colleague from Illinois for his very eloquent 
remarks and for reminding us of just how much we are spending. Even yet 
today, to maintain this nuclear stockpile, the United States spends 
roughly $30 billion a year. That is just about three times the amount 
that we are spending on all medical research at the National Institutes 
of Health, to find the causes and cures of things like heart disease, 
cancer, and Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's disease. Three times 
what we are spending on this arsenal than all medical research. We are 
trying to come up with money for NIH.
  We had a sense-of-the-Senate resolution last week--98 to 0--to 
support a doubling of funding for NIH. That would bring it up to about 
$25 billion a year, not even up to this level. Yet we do not have the 
money to even get about a 4 or 5 percent increase at NIH.
  I thank the Senator from Illinois for his eloquent comments.
  I want to also yield to the Senator from Rhode Island for his 
comments on this topic and thank him for being involved in this 
discussion on the floor of the Senate. This is an important 
anniversary. It must be noted. And we must mark it as hopefully the 
last anniversary in this long journey to get a Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty.
  I just say to my friend from Rhode Island and my friend from 
Illinois, that President Kennedy during that famous speech, 34 years 
ago today, at American University, called for an end to nuclear 
testing, and then proceeded to negotiate with the then-Soviet Union and 
others for a ban on atmospheric testing. Four months later this Senate 
ratified a ban on all atmospheric testing--4 months. And then here we 
have been 34 years to get to a comprehensive test ban.
  So if they could do that in 4 months, I would think now, certainly 
before the end of this year, we could bring this to a closure.
  I yield to my friend and my colleague from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. I thank the Senator for yielding. I commend him for his 
leadership on this important issue. And I also want to commend my 
colleague from Illinois for his very eloquent statement on this very 
important topic.
  I join my colleagues today in urging the administration to submit the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for its consideration and, 
hopefully, ratification. On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy 
delivered his famous address to the graduates of American University. 
He made his famous call for peace for all time. He was then searching 
for a solution to a tense nuclear standoff. He stated in that speech:

       Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on 
     weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need 
     to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the 
     acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy 
     and never create--is not the only, much less the most 
     efficient means of assuring peace.

  Mr. President, today we have an alternative means of assuring peace. 
After years of negotiations and false starts, 60 countries have 
approved the text of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which would 
prohibit all nuclear weapons test explosions or other nuclear 
explosions anywhere in the world.
  This treaty would prevent deployment and impede the development of 
these deadly weapons. It would not enter into force however until 
ratified by all 44 states which possess nuclear power, including the 
five countries which have harnessed this power to make nuclear weapons. 
Its comprehensiveness would reassure the 177 nonnuclear weapons states 
that nuclear proliferation is waning, thus eliminating the need of 
these states to develop their nuclear capability.
  The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty clearly has one purpose: To end the 
arms race and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. 
It seeks to accomplish its goal in an objective and fair manner.
  The membership of the executive council, the treaty's principal 
decisionmaking body, will be distributed evenly throughout the world.
  An international monitoring system will use scientific methods to 
detect and identify prohibited nuclear explosions. A network of 
seismic, hydroacoustic, and radionuclide monitoring stations will 
continuously collect and analyze data to ensure global compliance.
  A consultation and clarification regime will provide state parties 
with the opportunity to address accusations of noncompliance before an 
onsite inspection is ordered. And any state party which demands a 
frivolous or abusive inspection may be subject to punitive measures.
  How can the United States not take the lead in this cause? If we 
ratify this treaty, others will follow. Imagine a day when world peace 
is not decided by the size of nuclear stockpiles, but rather by the 
will and wishes of the people of the world. This treaty is the next 
step toward that reality.

  Mr. President, in his book of several years ago, ``The Good War,'' 
author Studs Terkel presented an oral history of those touched by World 
War II. He spoke with many individuals whose lives were shaped by the 
bomb. Indeed, he spoke with survivors of Hiroshima, who still do not 
talk about the events of August 6, 1945, without breaking down.
  He spoke with an American sailor who swam in the waters of the 
Marshall Islands the day after a test explosion. He died of cancer 
before the book was published.
  But perhaps Terkel's most disturbing chapter is his last, when he 
interviewed some children, aged 11 to 15, on a Chicago street corner in 
1965.
  One child, Sam, stated, ``I hope I can die of old age, before the 
world starts THE war.'' Ethel then chimed in, ``I wanna see if I'm 
gonna grow up first. I mean, I might not live to be grown up. Cause I 
don't know when my time is up * * * I never know if I could die 
overnight from the bomb or something.'' And finally Raymond said, 
``This might sound crazy, but I'd like to see a world without bombs. I 
mean without wars. It would be a lot bigger, the world. Maybe we could 
enjoy it more. Get a lot out of life, without worrying you would be 
blown up tomorrow.''

[[Page S5435]]

  Mr. President, generations growing up after World War II were haunted 
by the specter of annihilation by nuclear weapons. We now have an 
opportunity to rid these fears, the fears of our children, forever. The 
American people want this treaty. Over 80 percent of the public support 
its ratification. It is incumbent upon us to consider this treaty and 
to ratify it, to put to rest once and for all the specter of nuclear 
annihilation.
  I yield back my time to the Senator from Iowa.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank my colleague.
  Mr. President, how much time do I have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 20 minutes.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Chair.
  I thank my colleague from Rhode Island again for continuing to be 
involved in this discussion, for his leadership in the House and now in 
the Senate on the total issue of arms control and especially on the 
issue of the test ban treaty.
  Mr. President, let me continue for a little bit to talk some more 
about the aspects of this treaty and why it is so important that we 
ratify it this year.
  Again, to recap, 34 years ago today, on June 10, 1963, President 
Kennedy made a historic speech at American University here in 
Washington, DC. He talked about the need for a test ban treaty to limit 
the number of nuclear weapons tests. Four months after that, President 
Kennedy negotiated with the Soviet Union, signed and secured 
ratification from the United States Senate for the limited test ban 
treaty that banned all atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. So, since 
October 1963, the two nations have had no atmospheric tests of nuclear 
weapons.
  But President Kennedy's goal was not just atmospheric tests. His goal 
was to ban all nuclear weapons tests. As President Kennedy said on June 
10, a comprehensive test ban treaty ``would check the spiraling arms 
race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear 
powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest 
hazards * * * the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our 
security; it would decrease the prospects of war.'' That is a quote 
from President Kennedy's speech at American University 34 years ago.
  Mr. President, completion of a global nuclear test ban treaty 
negotiations has been a central nuclear arms control objective for more 
than 40 years. This long-awaited goal was finally won just last 
September, September 24, 1996, when the United States and other 
countries signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the CTBT as it is 
called, a treaty consistently supported by more than 80 percent of the 
American public.
  Now, we in the Senate must ensure that the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty is ratified here in the Senate and by 43 other nuclear-capable 
countries so that it formally enters into force.
  The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is a major milestone in the effort 
to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It would establish a 
permanent ban on all nuclear explosions in all environments for any 
purpose. It's zero-yield prohibition on nuclear tests would help to 
halt the development and deployment of new nuclear weapons. The treaty 
would also establish a far-reaching verification program that includes 
a global network of sophisticated seismic, hydro-acoustic, radionuclide 
monitoring stations, as well as on-site inspection of test sites to 
deter and detect violations.
  I might just add here, Mr. President, one of the important reasons 
for getting this treaty ratified as soon as possible is that under this 
regime, newly emerging nations that may be wanting to develop a nuclear 
weapon will find it thousands of times more difficult to do so. I will 
not put myself in a position of saying it will be absolutely 
impossible, nothing is 100 percent perfect, but many of these smaller 
nations that may want to have a nuclear weapon are going to need a 
small nuclear weapon. They will need some of the latest technology in 
order to have it delivered in a vehicle that they have in their 
possession or that they might soon acquire. To do that would require 
testing. If they cannot do the testing, then they cannot acquire the 
latest technology in nuclear weapon design and construction.
  Mr. President, in 1991, the Soviet Union announced a unilateral 
nuclear weapons test moratorium. In 1992, the House and Senate passed 
legislation establishing a 9-month U.S. moratorium with restrictions on 
the number and purpose of any further U.S. tests and a prohibition on 
U.S. tests after September 30, 1996, unless another nation conducts a 
test.
  In 1993, President Clinton, with advice from the armed services, the 
nuclear weapons laboratories, and the Energy Department, determined 
that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was safe and reliable without further 
testing. On July 3 of that year, he announced he would extend the test 
moratorium and agree to begin multilateral test ban negotiations in 
January of 1994.
  The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was negotiated over more than 2 
years at the 61-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. A key 
turning point occurred in 1995, when our Nation's leading nuclear 
weapons scientific advisors concluded that our nuclear weapons 
stockpile is safe and reliable and that even low-yield weapons tests 
are unnecessary, even the so-called safety tests intended to guard 
against defects that could lead to accidental warhead detonations.

  Spurred by the independent JASON scientific group's report that the 
United States nuclear arsenal is safe and reliable without testing, and 
spurred further by the international outcry when the French resumed 
nuclear testing after a 3-year hiatus, the United States and France 
then adopted a zero-yield test ban position in the nuclear weapons test 
ban talks.
  So, by August 1996, the negotiations produced a final nuclear weapons 
test ban treaty text supported by all countries except one, all 
countries except India, and India sought to include in the treaty a 
timetable for eliminating all nuclear weapons and, again, India would 
find its own nuclear weapons development program limited by a ban on 
testing. So, to overcome one nation's opposition, Australia proposed--
and more than 100 other countries supported--a resolution endorsing the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a zero-yield test ban, which was 
submitted to the U.N. General Assembly and passed by the overwhelming 
margin of 158-3 on September 10, 1996.
  Now, for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to formally enter into 
force, it must be ratified by 44 named signatory nations, including the 
five declared nuclear weapons states and the three undeclared nuclear 
weapons states--India, Israel, and Pakistan. The U.S. ratification 
requires, of course, a two-thirds vote by the U.S. Senate. However, 
until the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty does enter into force, all 
signatories, including the United States, are bound by article XVIII of 
the Vienna Convention on Treaties not to undertake any action that 
violates the purpose or intent of the treaty. In other words, the 
signatory nations shall not test nuclear weapons.
  That is sort of the recent history. Now, what is the next step? Well, 
several key steps must now be taken. Before the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty can be considered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and 
the full Senate, the Clinton administration must submit the articles of 
ratification and must reach agreement with the Senate leadership to 
begin formal consideration of the treaty. The treaty must also become a 
priority for the administration and for the U.S. Senate. The Foreign 
Relations Committee of the Senate and the Senate in its whole must then 
proceed with a thorough examination of the treaty and to vote on it. In 
the end, I believe the Senate will agree that ratification of the 
treaty is in our country's national security interests just as 
President Kennedy said 34 years ago today.
  The Senator from Illinois mentioned that conservatively we are 
spending about $30 billion a year now to maintain our nuclear 
stockpile. I wondered how much we had spent over the intervening years. 
It turns out that from right after the end of World War II until now, 
the United States has spent more than $300 billion --that is billion 
with a ``b''--$300 billion, about a third of a trillion dollars, for 
nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials. That does not include 
the cost of all the delivery vehicles--that is, all of the missiles, 
the silos we build, the Minutemans and the Titans--and it does

[[Page S5436]]

not include the cost of all the B-52 bombers, the B-47 bombers, the B-2 
bombers, and the B-1 bombers. It does not include that. It does not 
include the cost of all the submarines, all the Polaris and later the 
Trident submarines. That probably would come to hundreds of billions 
more. I am talking just about nuclear weapons material alone, and the 
weapons themselves--$300 billion approximately that we have spent, and 
now about $30 billion a year. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. President, 
that is 2\1/2\ times what we are spending on all medical research in 
the National Institutes of Health. We are spending 2\1/2\ times every 
year to maintain the nuclear stockpile than we are spending on all 
biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. That is 
not right, and that is why it is time to conclude the Comprehensive 
Test Ban Treaty.

  President Kennedy said 34 years ago today that the negotiations for a 
ban on above-ground nuclear tests were in sight, and he implored the 
Nation and the international community to bring that treaty to a 
conclusion. As I said, 4 months later, the agreement was reached and 
the atmospheric test ban treaty became a reality--in just 4 months at 
the height of the cold war.
  The Soviet Union no longer exists. We have relations with Russia, 
open relations. We visit their military establishments; they visit 
ours. We now have an agreement where they will be an adviser to NATO. 
Well, now it is time for us to conclude the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty. It has been around a long time. Now we are at the point where 
we can bring it to its final conclusion.
  President Clinton must adopt the same attitude that President Kennedy 
adopted in 1963. He must insist on a quick closure, to make it a top 
priority of his administration to get the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty 
ratified by the Senate this year. It is in our best interests. It would 
help secure our planet from nuclear threats. It would go a long way 
toward ensuring that newly emerging nations do not get their hands on 
the nuclear trigger and would begin the process of getting rid of, over 
a period of time, the nuclear stockpiles that we have and saving all of 
that money that we are now spending and, hopefully, putting that money 
into important endevors such as medical research.
  Well, the end is in sight. We soon can have in hand a comprehensive 
ban on all nuclear weapons tests.
  Mr. President, sometimes it boggles the mind to think of how many 
nuclear tests we have had in the past. Nuclear tests worldwide, 
underground tests, 1,517, with the United States doing 815, the old 
Soviet Union doing 496, France doing 160, Britain 24, China 22, and 
India 1.
  Atmospheric testing: 528 atmospheric tests prior to 1963, with the 
United States doing 215, the Soviet Union doing 219, France doing 50, 
Britain, 21, and China, 23. Total, all tests: 2,046.
  A sad, sad chapter in the history of humankind; a terrible toll that 
it has taken not only economically from America and other countries by 
what we have spent, but I think it has taken a terrible toll 
environmentally.
  Much of the money that we spend now through the Department of Energy 
for our nuclear weapons stockpile is spent on cleaning up the mess that 
was made, first, through the production of nuclear materials; second, 
through the refining of these nuclear materials, and the processing; 
third, through the storage; and, of course, fourth, through the 
underground testing.
  So we are spending today, and we will continue to spend in our 
lifetimes, billions of dollars just to clean up the mess that has been 
made.
  There is another mess that has been made that we are paying for 
dearly. All those atmospheric tests that I mentioned--528 of them--each 
and every one of those produced in the atmosphere large amounts of 
plutonium and other toxic materials. I have seen estimates that tons of 
plutonium were released during all of these tests into the atmosphere, 
in the food chain, and in sea life. The half-life of plutonium is tens 
of thousands of years. And, yet, we know it is one of the most 
carcinogenic materials known to mankind. One microscopic piece of 
plutonium can cause cancer.
  Who knows how much plutonium is embedded into the ground and into the 
soils from the underground tests, how much of that plutonium may find 
itself to underground aquifers later on in the evolution of our planet?
  We are paying a terrible price for this sad chapter of our history. 
We shouldn't pay the price any longer. Now is the time to end testing 
once and for all and close the books on it.
  I call upon President Clinton to make this a priority of his 
administration this year. I call upon the majority leader of the Senate 
and the minority leader of the Senate to make it a priority for the 
U.S. Senate this year that we debate and vote on the comprehensive test 
ban treaty. I call upon the chairman and the vice chair of the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee, as soon as the President sends this down, 
to take it up, to investigate it, to debate it fully, and to vote on it 
and report it to the floor of the Senate.
  This must be a priority. We must do it this year. Let's make this 
34th anniversary of President Kennedy's speech at American University 
the last anniversary before we have a completion of what he called a 
ban on all nuclear testing.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my friend, the 
Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], in marking the anniversary of President 
John F. Kennedy's historic speech on nuclear disarmament. It was in 
that speech, given June 10, 1963, at American University, that 
President Kennedy announced the initiation of negotiations for a 
comprehensive ban on nuclear tests. I am pleased to see that now, 34 
years later, a comprehensive test ban is on the verge of becoming 
reality.
  I am a strong supporter of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT] 
as a way to curtail nuclear proliferation. This treaty, once it is 
ratified by the 44 actual or potential nuclear powers, will ban all 
nuclear explosions no matter how small. In 1993, I cosponsored 
legislation that extended our moratorium on nuclear tests and called on 
the United States to end all testing by the year 1996. That bill passed 
and the United States' unilateral move to stop testing has shown our 
commitment to a worldwide ban on nuclear explosions. As we all know, 
the CTBT won approval in the U.N. General Assembly last September and, 
just days after the U.N. vote, President Clinton signed the treaty on 
behalf of the United States. More than 100 other nuclear and nonnuclear 
states have also signed the CTBT.
  Mr. President, the CTBT will act as an essential complement to the 
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and will help end the threat of 
nuclear war. By prohibiting nonnuclear states from developing atomic 
weapons, the Non-Proliferation Treaty has greatly enhanced global 
security since it was first signed back in 1968. The CTBT, by 
prohibiting nuclear testing, will provide further assurance that no 
additional states will develop nuclear weapons. The world will 
undoubtedly be a safer place once all nuclear explosions, even 
underground ones, are permanently outlawed.
  Since President Kennedy first initiated test ban negotiations, the 
United States has taken the leading role in ending nuclear testing. We 
must maintain this momentum. I urge the President to submit the CTBT to 
the Senate for its advice and consent at the earliest possible date and 
then I would hope the Foreign Relations Committee would take it up for 
consideration soon thereafter. The United States should continue its 
leadership by ratifying the CTBT. We should demonstrate that our 
commitment to a nuclear test ban is as strong as ever.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to join my 
colleagues today in marking the 34th anniversary of President Kennedy's 
historic call for negotiations aimed at reducing the risk of nuclear 
war.
  President Kennedy's June 10, 1963, address at American University 
marked the beginning of serious international efforts to limit the 
nuclear arms race and to avert the nightmarish possibility of a nuclear 
war. His initiative resulted a few months later in the Limited Test Ban 
Treaty, which brought about the first pause in the nuclear powers' 
efforts to construct bigger, better, and more nuclear weapons.
  It's worth noting that President Kennedy's objectives were more 
ambitious. He had hoped to enact a comprehensive nuclear test ban, but 
was unable to win agreement for such a bold step. Now,

[[Page S5437]]

more than three decades later, we have an opportunity to realize this 
objective.
  Following several years of negotiations in the U.N. Conference on 
Disarmament, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT] was completed and 
opened for signature in September 1996. Since then, over 140 countries 
have signed the document, including all five declared nuclear weapons 
states. For the treaty to enter into force, 44 key signatories, 
including the United States, must ratify the agreement prior to 
September 1998.
  Mr. President, over the past few years I have had the privilege of 
participating on a steering committee of a project organized by the 
Henry L. Stimson Center on Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction. The 
objective of the group, which included such authorities on foreign 
policy and national security as Gen. Andrew Goodpaster and Ambassador 
Paul Nitze, was to consider concrete measures the United States could 
undertake to work toward the long-term goal of a world free of nuclear 
weapons. In our third and final report, released in March, we laid out 
several steps President Clinton and Congress can take now to ensure 
that future generations are safe from the threat posed by weapons of 
mass destruction. Ratification of the CTBT was one of the three most 
urgent measures we recommended.
  Enactment of a comprehensive test ban would do more to stem 
proliferation and reduce the nuclear threat than any other action we 
could take at this time. The details of the CTBT are technical and 
complex but the effect of the treaty is pure and simple: it would ban 
all nuclear test explosions. Not only would this constrain the 
development of more complex weapons but it would also protect our 
environment.

  The United States already has a moratorium in effect on nuclear 
weapons tests and has not conducted such a test since 1992. It's time 
to make this moratorium permanent and ensure that others follow suit.
  The administration has indicated its intent to present the CTBT to 
the Senate for advice and consent. However, to date it has not done so. 
I appreciate that the treaty is likely to be controversial in some 
quarters and that the Senate has only recently concluded a hotly 
contested debate on another important arms control treaty, the Chemical 
Weapons Convention [CWC]. However, one of the problems we faced with 
the CWC was that it was not brought before the Senate as quickly as it 
could have been. For that and other reasons, we found ourselves in late 
April facing a deadline affecting our participation in the treaty.
  Let's not put ourselves in that position again. Let's begin the 
debate on the treaty now so that our decision on ratification--which I 
fervently hope will be a positive one--can serve as a signal of 
encouragement to other countries.
  Thirty-four years ago today, President Kennedy called on us to pause 
and consider the effects of a devastating nuclear conflict. He put us 
on a path to eliminating this threat. Let's honor his memory by 
fulfilling one of his grandest objectives. Let's act on and ratify the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
  Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.

                          ____________________