Senate Ratifies INF; Dole and Byrd to Fly to Moscow : Four GOP Lawmakers Bolt Ranks

Working against a pre-summit deadline, the Senate today overwhelmingly approved a treaty eliminating U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles, ratifying the first major arms pact between the two superpowers in 16 years and the first to require actual destruction of weapons.

The final vote was 93 to 5, with four Republicans breaking ranks with their President in joining one Democrat in voting against the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty.

Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia and GOP Leader Bob Dole of Kansas quickly informed Reagan of the outcome in a telephone call to Helsinki, Finland, where the President was resting in advance of the summit beginning Sunday in Moscow with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The two leaders accepted Reagan’s invitation to fly to Moscow next Tuesday and bring the ratification documents with them.

Approval of the treaty had been considered certain because it requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, or 67 votes, and as many as 90 senators had expressed solid support for it before the vote.

Senators voting against the treaty were Republicans Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Steve Symms of Idaho, Gordon J. Humphrey of New Hampshire, Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming and Democrat Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina.

1st Since ’72 ABM Pact

Sens. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio) did not vote.

The pact was the first U.S.-Soviet weapons treaty to be approved since the 1972 accord on anti-ballistic missiles.

Applause filled the chamber when the final vote was announced, and Byrd asked that Reagan be immediately notified of the action.

With INF negotiator Maynard Glitman watching from the packed Senate gallery, the last amendments were resolved, including one from archconservative Helms, who had fought the pact from the outset.

The Senate today voted 94 to 4 for a watered-down Helms proposal asking that the Senate be consulted on further arms talks. It rejected, on a voice vote, a Helms amendment demanding that U.S. troops in Europe be withdrawn upon ratification of the treaty.

“We are making a breakthrough,” said Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston (D-Calif.). “It is not a substantively significant treaty. . . . But it lays the foundation” for future treaties “that can substantially reduce the scale, cost and dangers of this arms race.”

15 Amendments Rejected

The INF agreement not only calls for the elimination of an entire class of superpower weaponry at unequal ratios, it also includes unprecedented arrangements to monitor compliance, elements that offer hope for future accords on ending the arms race and reducing the strategic weapons that threaten global destruction.

The Soviets are to destroy 1,752 missiles while the United States will eliminate 867, including both deployed and non-deployed weapons.

Leading up to the ratification vote, the chamber rejected a total of 15 relatively minor amendments offered by Republicans during two weeks of work on the pact.

Reagan and Gorbachev signed the pact Dec. 8 at their summit meeting in Washington, and the Administration had pushed for Senate action before the Moscow summit.

The only major change voted was a Democratic-backed amendment to the ratification resolution, barring future administrations from changing the U.S. interpretation of the treaty without prior Senate approval. That arose from a fight with Reagan over the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the last arms pact to win Senate ratification.