[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
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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,
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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.
____________________