Nunn Threatens to Delay Nuclear Weapons Treaty

Sen. Sam Nunn escalated his battle against the Reagan Administration’s broad interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty by threatening in a letter released today to slow Senate ratification of any treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons in Europe.

The Georgia Democrat, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, outlined his intentions in the letter to President Reagan on Tuesday.

The letter, made public today by Nunn’s office, comes amid widespread reports that U.S. and Soviet officials in Geneva are in the final stages of negotiations on a treaty to eliminate medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

If such a treaty is submitted to the Senate, Nunn told Reagan, he will demand that senators be given the complete negotiating record leading to the agreement, unless the Administration backs away from the legal doctrine used to justify its broad interpretation of the ABM treaty.

Review ‘Time-Consuming’

While insisting that he does not want to delay Senate ratification of a treaty removing missiles from Europe, Nunn said a Senate review of the six-year negotiating record “will obviously be time-consuming.”

He also told Reagan that such a review would require that the negotiating record be declassified and made public.

“I find this situation deplorable and hope that the Senate will not have to follow this course of action,” Nunn said in the letter.

“I would much prefer that we return to a method of conducting treaty ratification proceedings wherein the Senate can confidently rely upon the representations of the executive branch officials,” he said.

Would Permit ‘Star Wars’

Nunn said, however, that the Senate would be neglecting its duty if it did not review the complete negotiating record in light of the Administration’s efforts to adopt a broad interpretation of the ABM treaty.

The Administration announced its broad interpretation in 1985 but has continued to abide by the traditional view of the treaty. The new interpretation would permit early deployment and testing of Reagan’s proposed “Star Wars” missile defense system.

Nunn has argued that the broad interpretation is not justified either by the negotiating record of the ABM treaty or by the record of the Senate ratification debate, including testimony by Nixon Administration officials about the meaning of the treaty.

But Abraham D. Sofaer, the State Department’s legal adviser, told Congress earlier this year that the negotiating record of the ABM treaty justifies the broad interpretation regardless of what the Senate was told by Nixon Administration officials.