Senate Clears Last Big Hurdle on INF Treaty

The Senate cleared the decks Thursday for ratification of the historic treaty banning medium-range missiles, making a strong assertion that its interpretation of the agreement is permanently binding.

After hours of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations and a sharp floor debate, a compromise pushed by Democrats settled a partisan dispute that had simmered since the treaty was signed at the meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev here last December.

The compromise amendment, offered by Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), was adopted by a vote of 72 to 27, removing the last major obstacle to approval of the treaty.

Wilson Offers Measure

The chances of getting the agreement to a final approval vote Thursday night were dashed when Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and several other Republicans sought to attach language to the resolution declaring that “the United States shall not be bound to any interpretation of this treaty that is not equally binding on the Soviet Union.”

Furious because he saw the amendment nullifying the compromise interpretation amendment finally approved a few hours earlier, Byrd warned that the chances of getting the treaty to Reagan in Moscow on Sunday in time for the U.S.-Soviet summit meeting were about to be destroyed.

Senators voted 53 to 45 to table the amendment, ending the momentary crisis.

But Byrd declared, “If we are going to continue to have . . . Mickey Mouse amendments like this, the President is not going to have his treaty before he leaves the summit.”

As senators sat, seemingly stunned at Byrd’s angry assault on the Wilson amendment, Robert Dole of Kansas, the Senate minority leader, expressed hope that there “would not be a falling out” of the coalition lined up ready to push the agreement to final approval.

With that, efforts to finish work on the pact were abandoned for the night.

Compromise Hailed

Earlier, Dole, noting that Republicans were unhappy that the treaty debate had become embroiled in the bitter turf fight between the Senate and the government’s executive branch, hailed the compromise as a sensible step to avoid “a partisan bloodletting.”

Twenty Republicans joined the Democrats in adopting Byrd’s amendment, bringing ratification within grasp, nearly five months after the pact was submitted for approval. Only one Democrat--Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina--opposed the amendment, which Byrd contended was more important than the treaty itself.

Under terms of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union must dismantle all of their ground-launched missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles.

Approval Not in Doubt

For the Soviets it means getting rid of 650 triple-warhead SS-20s targeted on Western Europe. The United States will remove from Europe and dismantle 429 Pershing 2 ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles.

U.S. approval of the treaty was a foregone conclusion, but last-minute confusion over language and conservative opposition extended the Senate debate until there was doubt that the ratification documents would be ready for Reagan and Gorbachev to exchange next week.

Ten attempts to change the treaty text were turned back during nine days of debate on the Senate floor.

Democrats, angry over what they regarded as the Reagan Administration’s reinterpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, also insisted upon putting language in the resolution of ratification asserting the Senate’s right to interpret treaties and foreclosing any reinterpretation by future Administrations.

GOP Disaffection

Republicans on Thursday labeled the Byrd amendment, a compromise substituted for stronger language earlier approved by the Foreign Relations Committee, as a naked power grab by the Senate.

Sen. Arlen K. Specter (R-Pa.) called adoption of the measure “an unconditional surrender by the Administration” and “an unconscionable rush to judgment by the Senate.”

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., who remained in Washington after Reagan’s departure for Moscow by way of Helsinki, conferred with Republican and Democratic senators Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Dole, citing the importance of compromise, joined in voting for the amendment. But he said that the compromise did not have the endorsement of the Administration.

The amendment declares that the United States shall interpret the treaty in accordance with the common understanding of it by the President and the Senate at the time of ratification. If a dispute arises in the future over the treaty’s interpretation, it says, it will be settled in accordance with U.S. law. Removed was an earlier notation that directly referred to a constitutional mandate for Senate interpretation of the treaty.

‘2-Treaty Doctrine’

Specter, insisting that the issue was one of the most important to reach the Senate floor in a decade, declared that the Senate was launching a “doctrine of two treaties,” in which American presidents will negotiate one agreement with foreign powers and another with the Senate.

Byrd, who declared the fight over the Senate’s role and the issue of reinterpretation of treaties more important than the INF agreement itself, hailed the vote on the compromise amendment as an historic moment.

“This Senate’s action on this treaty should be a clear signal to the Administration and future Administrations and the Soviet Union,” he said, “that this Senate will not roll over and play dead or be a rubber stamp for any President on any treaty. We are not going to be stampeded.”

Throughout the debate, Democrats sought to assure Republicans that they were not trying to use the new treaty to refight the old battle over the ABM Treaty and the Administration’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. It was the Administration’s assertion that the 16-year-old treaty could be interpreted more broadly to permit “Star Wars” testing that set off the fight over treaty interpretation.

Significant Provisions

Treaty supporters contend that the new treaty is as significant for its on-site inspection provisions as it is for the removal of about 4% of the U.S. and Soviet arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads.

Both supporters and opponents saw the debate over ratification as a preview of the kind of battle that would await a more far-reaching treaty on the reduction of long-range missiles.

Although the medium-range pact will send U.S. inspection teams into the Soviet Union and admit Soviet inspectors into key sites in the United States, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) argued that there is still opportunity for massive Soviet cheating.

He used discrepancies in estimates by various U.S. intelligence agencies to argue that the Soviets could have hidden hundreds of SS-20 missiles.

One of the last amendments put aside by the Senate was a proposal by Helms that would have directed Reagan to make no commitments at the Moscow summit on strategic weapons reductions without close consultation with Congress.