Senate OKs Pact to Ban Chemical Warfare

In a striking foreign policy victory for President Clinton, the Senate late Thursday night ratified a worldwide treaty banning chemical weapons.

The pact was approved 74-26, seven votes more than the two-thirds majority required for passage. All of the Senate’s 45 Democrats were joined by 29 Republicans in supporting the ratification.

Although the treaty had been signed by former President Bush, Clinton lobbied hard for its ratification, and the Senate vote became a major test of his foreign policy leadership.

Minutes after the treaty’s ratification, Clinton hailed the outcome as “an example of America working as it should,” with Democrats and Republicans coming together “for the common good.”

At a brief news conference, Clinton said approval of the accord will mean that “our troops will be less likely to face poison gas on the battlefield, our hand will be strengthened in the fight against terrorists and rogue states, and we will end a century that began with the horror of chemical weapons in World War I much closer to elimination of those kinds of weapons.”

The treaty was a test as well for Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who took over as Senate Republican leader 10 months ago when Bob Dole resigned to campaign full time for president. Lott, who had never before taken the spotlight on a major foreign policy issue, opposed the pact originally but changed his mind, deciding that a defeat would damage U.S. prestige.

The treaty had been opposed bitterly by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and its passage was not assured until Lott took the floor of the Senate in the midst of Thursday’s debate and announced his support.

Before ratifying the treaty, the Senate defeated five amendments by Helms that, in the view of the White House, would have crippled the treaty and rendered U.S. ratification of it meaningless.

Lott had been the focus of intense lobbying in support of the treaty by the Clinton administration, largely because his opposition probably would have swayed other conservative Republicans and kept the accord from obtaining the two-thirds majority.

During the early stages of Thursday’s debate, Lott told his colleagues that various conditions--which the White House agreed could be attached--had assuaged many of his concerns about the treaty. He told the Senate that he intended to vote for the accord “because I believe the United States is marginally better off with it than without it.”

He added: “I believe there will be real and lasting consequences to the United States if we do not ratify the convention. . . . In a very real sense, the credibility of commitments made by two presidents of our country, one Republican and one Democrat, is at stake.”

The treaty, which is known as the Chemical Weapons Convention and goes into effect April 29, bans the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and requires all countries to eliminate any existing stockpiles of such weapons by the year 2007. With the Senate vote, the United States joins 75 other nations that have ratified it, out of the 165 nations that have signed it.

Approval of the treaty was signaled in the afternoon by the Senate’s first test vote. At issue was a condition proposed by Helms to withhold U.S. ratification until Iraq, Iran, Libya and other rogue states ratify it as well.

The White House had labeled this “a killer amendment,” arguing that its adoption would not pass international muster. It was rejected 71-29. Only a simple majority was needed to turn down such amendments, but the margin was significant because it was four votes more than the 67 needed for overall ratification.

The other Helms’ amendments were also defeated handily.

In leading the opposition to the treaty, Helms scoffed at the idea that it would accomplish its goals.

He told the Senate on Thursday that, if nothing else, he wanted to inform the U.S. people that “nothing is being done for their safety in this treaty.”

In the weeks leading up the vote, Clinton’s top foreign policy team--Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and others--spent hours with Lott and Helms trying to reach compromises that would deal with some of the GOP objections to the pact.

In the end, the administration accepted 28 conditions that the United States will attach to the treaty when filing the ratification.

These included a commitment to improve U.S. defenses against chemical weapons, a pledge that the United States will pay no more than its “fair share” of the cost of implementing the treaty and a further pledge that the country will never share secret chemical defense information with rogue states, even if they do sign the treaty. Another condition said the United States may use riot-control gas when needed.

There has been so much talk about the chemical weapons treaty in the past few weeks that the debate on the floor on the day of voting lacked much passion.

There were few fiery flashes, and it was doubtful that any of the rhetoric changed a single vote.

Lott’s decision to support the treaty, by contrast, was probably far more decisive.

He said his decision had been solidified by a letter he received from Clinton on Thursday pledging that the United States will withdraw from the treaty if other countries used it as cover to transfer chemical weapons and chemical defense information that might endanger U.S. national security.

Although the president’s commitment would not be part of the treaty, Lott said, “he is the president, and his assurance in foreign policy must make a difference.”

He added in later comments: “I consider it an ironclad commitment from the president of the United States to the Senate.”

Although many Republicans opposed the treaty at first, some obviously had decided that scuttling a bid to ban chemical weapons could hurt the party in the long run.

Polls have shown widespread public support for the accord. And those in favor of it summoned stark arguments to bolster this view. In Thursday’s debate, for instance, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) declared that “the effects of chemical weapons are so barbaric, so devastating, that we must see that they are never used again.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and the floor manager of the resolution ratifying the treaty, described the bill Thursday as an important test of whether the United States intends to exercise leadership in the post-Cold War world.

“I know some of us engage in hyperbole,” he said, “but I honestly believe that . . . this may be the most important vote that some of us will cast in this Congress.”

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Status of the Treaty

The Chemical Weapons Convention would ban the use, development, production or stockpiling of all chemical warfare agents and would require the destruction of existing stockpiles over the next decade. Here’s where it stands:

Countries that have signed and ratified the treaty

Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Laos, Latvia, Lesotho, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Uzbekistan.

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Countries that have signed but not ratified the treaty.

Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Micronesia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe

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Countries that have not signed the treaty

Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Botswana, Egypt, Eritrea, Grenada, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, Mozambique, North Korea, Palau, Sao Tome and Principe, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu, Yugoslavia.