JFK’s Name Invoked in Push for Nuclear Test Ban

President Clinton and several key senators on Tuesday launched a concerted campaign to ratify a global treaty banning nuclear tests, invoking the legacy of John F. Kennedy, one of the initial supporters of such an international pact.

“Nuclear experts affirm that we can maintain a safe and reliable deterrent without nuclear tests,” Clinton told a small gathering in the White House Rose Garden. “The question now is whether we will adopt or whether we will lose a verifiable treaty that will bar other nations from testing nuclear weapons.”

At a news conference in the Capitol later in the day, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, condemned efforts by a small group of Senate Republican leaders to block a full floor debate on the treaty. He called the action “counterintuitive, irresponsible and against the wishes of the American people and the willing of a majority of U.S. senators.”

“It is stupid,” Biden concluded.

In his brief White House remarks, Clinton made three direct references to the former president, including Kennedy’s commitment to arms control. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) also quoted Kennedy’s 1961 plea for a test ban treaty.

Both White House officials and senators participating in the news conference denied any attempt to capitalize on the wave of public sympathy in the wake of the Kennedy family’s latest tragedy, the fatal crash last week of a small plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. But arms control specialists who have worked for months to secure a high-profile commitment for early ratification admitted that the Kennedy connection probably would help them. Kennedy negotiated a treaty banning atmospheric nuclear testing with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1963.

Although listed as a major White House priority at the start of the year, efforts to win ratification of the test ban treaty have been persistently sidelined by other developments, including the war against Yugoslavia. As time went on, some arms control specialists interpreted Clinton’s silence as a decision to withhold his personal backing--a development that probably would have doomed any chance of Senate approval.

The United States was one of the original sponsors of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and Clinton was the first world leader to sign the ban. However, resistance from conservative Senate Republicans, including powerful Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), has blocked ratification.

Helms has refused to open committee hearings on the accord until the White House submits two other treaties to the Senate first--the Kyoto Protocol that limits greenhouse gas emissions, and modifications to another treaty linked to deployment of a national missile defense system.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) could maneuver the treaty around Helms’ committee and take it directly to the Senate floor for debate, but so far he has refused to do so.

Senate action is considered extremely important, even though only 18 of the 44 nations designated as nuclear-capable states have so far ratified the ban. Arms control specialists are convinced ratification by the United States would quickly bring many of the remaining countries on board, including nuclear giants Russia and China. It also might persuade the newest members of the nuclear club, India and Pakistan, to sign and ratify.