Senate Leaders Move to End INF Treaty Debate

Senate leaders moved to end the laborious debate on the medium-range missile treaty Tuesday, filing a procedural petition that could produce a final vote in time for the pact to be sealed by President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Moscow summit meeting.

For the first time since the debate reached the Senate floor a week ago, leaders were optimistic that they could wind up the ratification fight in time for the treaty documents to be exchanged between the President and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

The leaders met with Reagan at the White House on Tuesday morning, and Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) said Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia gave the President his assurance that the treaty will shortly get the long-awaited Senate approval.

Baker to Remain Behind

Reagan leaves Washington today en route to Helsinki, Finland, for a stopover on his way to the Soviet capital, but White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. will remain behind to keep tabs on the Senate’s deliberations.

If all goes according to the plan devised by Senate leaders Tuesday, Baker will take the Senate’s approved resolution of ratification with him when he leaves to join the presidential party in Moscow on Sunday.

The petition to end debate bore the name of 22 senators, including the leaders of both parties. Under Senate rules, a formal motion will probably be introduced sometime around 1 a.m. Thursday, with 60 votes needed to approve it.

If it passes, 30 hours of debate would then be allowed before the pact, negotiated between Washington and Moscow for nearly eight years, would come to a vote.

Holding Out Hope

The resort to a cloture petition came reluctantly, and even after the petition was filed, some senators still held out hope that compromises could be reached to avoid imposing a cutoff of debate.

Although the use of such a tactic in a treaty debate is unusual, it has notable precedents.

In 1919, the Senate invoked cloture in the debate of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and in 1972 it used the device to shut off debate on the resolution of ratification accompanying the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Both Byrd and Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said Tuesday afternoon that they still hope the holdouts will agree to wind up their amendments to the treaty text so the Senate can begin consideration of the resolution of ratification, where there is a sharp division among Republicans and Democrats over a provision added by the Foreign Relations Committee. There was no sign of compromise, however.

The controversial provision, sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), asserts that the meaning of the treaty is determined by the Senate’s interpretation based upon the authoritative testimony it has received from Reagan Administration witnesses. It also seeks to prevent reinterpretation by a future Administration.

This Administration, supported by many Senate Republicans, views the “Biden condition” as an attempt by Democrats to re-fight the long-running battle over the 1972 ABM treaty. In that dispute, the Administration has reinterpreted the agreement to allow for continued development of its Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as “Star Wars.”

Republicans turned down a compromise proposed by Democrats last week.

Cranston, who was one of the chief authors and sponsors of the “Biden condition,” said Democrats now are prepared to put the resolution of ratification to a vote with the language intact.

‘We Will Lose a Few’

“We will lose a few votes,” he said, “but not enough to lose ratification.” A majority of two-thirds is required to recommend ratification.

Although the decision to seek cloture on the debate appeared to put the agreement on a firm course toward a final vote before the weekend, there was defiant criticism of the leadership’s determination to vote in time to deliver the approved resolution to Moscow.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the chief strategist of the opposition, charged that Reagan had been “misled” and “misguided” in signing the treaty in the first place. He told the Senate that the Administration had turned into “a bunch of nervous Nellies about going back to Gorbachev and working out defects in this treaty.”

Referring to the pressure imposed by Reagan’s departure for the summit, the North Carolina senator said he had grown weary of hearing “Let’s do it for the Jipper or the Gipper, or however you pronounce it. . . .”

‘We Agree to Disagree’

Helms, along with Sens. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) and Steve Symms (R-Ida.), both treaty opponents, was invited to the White House to discuss the debate with the President on Tuesday afternoon. Upon his return to the Senate, he told a reporter, “We agreed to disagree, agreeably.”

Helms did not tip his hand on what course he will take now. Late Tuesday, he huddled with Dole and Byrd in the majority leader’s office for more than an hour, discussing a possible compromise to head off cloture. A meeting with the leadership, plus key committee chairmen and ranking members, was scheduled for this morning.

Earlier in the day, Helms announced that he would introduce an amendment requiring that the United States and the Soviet Union destroy the nuclear warheads being removed from banned missiles.