The World - News from April 3, 1987

Republican senators launched a counterattack against Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), apparently fearing that his recent scathing criticism of the Administration’s broad interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty might doom the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” the space-based missile defense program. Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the first of 17 GOP senators to make floor speeches this week and next, asserted that the President, not the Senate--which ratified the treaty in 1972--has the final say on its interpretation. He backed the Administration’s claim that the classified negotiating record shows that the Soviets never agreed to ban testing and development of a “Star Wars”-type system. Nunn said the record is ambiguous.