Senate Rejects Two INF ‘Killer Amendments’

The Senate on Friday buried two attempts to postpone implementation of the U.S.-Soviet medium-range missile treaty, defeating amendments that supporters said would have killed the agreement outright.

By overwhelming margins, a bipartisan coalition brushed aside one provision that would have required presidential certification that the Soviets have ended violations of existing treaties and another that would have delayed implementation until allied forces in Europe have built up their supplies of fuel and ammunition.

The decisive victories for supporters of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty came as no surprise, but foot-dragging opponents frustrated Senate leaders’ efforts to bring the agreement to a vote by the middle of next week.

A ‘Sneak Attack’

When Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) announced plans to bring debate to an end on the treaty proper and move to the resolution of ratification, where the most contested issues await, an angry Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.) accused him of a parliamentary “sneak attack” that Humphrey said he found “shocking and shameful.”

Treaty opponents demonstrated more clout with their tactics than the lopsided votes indicated.

In votes on five different sections, Sen. Steve Symms (R-Ida.) saw his amendment linking treaty implementation to a presidential certification of Soviet compliance beaten 85 to 11, 87 to 10, 86 to 11, 82 to 15 and 89 to 8.

Humphrey, emphasizing that forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have less than seven days’ supplies of fuel and ammunition, pushed an amendment that would have prevented the treaty from going into effect until supplies sufficient for at least 15 days of combat operations are available.

Although treaty supporters did not take issue with Humphrey on the NATO problem, they defeated his amendment by a vote of 73 to 8.

Humphrey conceded that it would take years for the conventional ammunition stocks to be built up to the levels he demanded but, under the present circumstances, he contended that allied forces could be annihilated by the superior conventional arms of the Warsaw Pact.

Although NATO forces will retain battlefield nuclear weapons and fighter-bombers capable of delivering nuclear warheads, the treaty outlaws all land-based missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles.

Opponents Ignore Pleas

Senate leaders had hoped to wind up consideration of the treaty proper before the end of the day Friday, but opponents ignored pleas to promptly introduce their amendments and in some cases declined to indicate what their amendments will be.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), repeatedly contending that supporters are bent on rushing a treaty flawed with mistakes and inaccuracies to approval, responded to the pressure by asserting that the agreement had been debated only three days, “while it took 70 days on the giveaway of the Panama Canal.”

After a day of edging a step forward and a step back, Byrd told senators before they recessed: “It should be plainly written on the record that the little bundle with the blue ribbon on it will not go with the President to Moscow if we are on this treaty much longer.”

President Reagan is scheduled to depart Wednesday for Moscow and his four-day summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

He is scheduled to stop in Helsinki for two days en route. Except for the most staunch treaty opponents, both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are anxious for Reagan to be able to exchange documents of ratification with Gorbachev in Moscow.

‘A Terribly Crippled President’

“If he goes there without this treaty being ratified, I’ll predict that we are going to have a terribly crippled President of the United States,” Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) declared during the debate on Humphrey’s amendment.

Debate will resume Monday.

Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes effort failed to find a compromise on language setting out the Senate’s role in treaty ratification and declaring that the INF pact cannot be reinterpreted by a future Administration.

The so-called “Biden condition” has produced a serious split between Democrats and Republicans. The language had been sought by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) before he underwent major surgery, which has kept him from the Senate ever since.

Democrats insist that the provision attached by the Foreign Relations Committee is an effort to clear up the Senate’s role on the INF treaty and pin down its interpretation, in the wake of the Reagan Administration’s reinterpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union.

Dispute Over ‘Star Wars’

Republicans maintain that it is a continuation of the dispute over the “Star Wars” missile defense program. It was the desire to move ahead with the “Star Wars” program that caused the Administration to conclude, more than a decade after the fact, that the ABM pact was subject to a broader interpretation.

A Republican proposal given to Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) late Thursday was dismissed as “no compromise” after it was studied by Democratic strategists Friday.

Cranston said he had believed that the dispute, considered the most serious of all, might be resolved without getting into a party fight on the Senate floor. But after key Democrats huddled and discussed the offer relayed by Lugar, Cranston said, they were prepared to defend the “Biden condition” in a floor fight.