Senate Fails to Reach Deal to Delay Nuclear Pact Vote

Senate leaders failed to reach agreement Tuesday on a procedure for postponing a scheduled vote on the controversial nuclear test-ban treaty, paving the way for near-certain defeat of the measure today unless a compromise between the two parties is reached.

After a day of frenzied negotiations, Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told reporters that “we don’t have an agreement at this point.” But Lott said he and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) were “exploring all kinds of possibilities” and might hit upon an acceptable formula for postponing the vote.

If the Senate goes ahead with the balloting, it almost certainly will refuse to ratify the treaty. Under the Constitution, it takes a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, to approve a treaty. So far, only about 46 senators are expected to support the pact.

Lott said he remained “comfortable with” going ahead with the vote despite pleas by President Clinton to postpone the action indefinitely in the national interest. Clinton acknowledges that he lacks the votes to ratify the treaty.

Defeat of the treaty would mark a major foreign policy setback for the administration and would essentially doom the accord that has been signed by 150 nations. It also would mark the first time since 1919 that the Senate has rejected a major foreign policy treaty.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would prohibit nuclear testing worldwide and strengthen global monitoring to detect violations. Clinton has described the pact as the centerpiece of his foreign policy program. But Republicans have criticized the treaty as flawed, contending that it would prevent the United States from maintaining a nuclear deterrent while enabling Third World dictators to build more bombs.

Strategists for both parties said the two sides had worked out a tentative accord earlier Tuesday that was acceptable to the Senate Democratic Caucus but that conservative Republicans refused to go along with it.

The nub of the disagreement was over the wording of a pledge that GOP senators had demanded from Democrats that, if Republicans agree to delay the vote, the Democrats won’t seek to revive the pact until January 2001.

The pledge was one of two conditions that conservatives had placed on their willingness to postpone the vote and thus avert outright defeat of the treaty. The other--that Clinton request the vote delay in writing--was fulfilled Monday.

The intense discussions Tuesday between a small group of Democratic and Republican leaders were based on a draft letter by Daschle designed to meet GOP demands that the Democrats agree not to bring the treaty up again this year or next.

Republicans appeared willing to accept Daschle’s pledge but were wary of an escape clause in his letter that promised to shelve the treaty “absent unforeseen changes in the international situation.” Lott said Republicans wanted “an ironclad commitment.”

Under the tentative agreement worked out by the two leaders, Lott would have pledged in turn that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would conduct comprehensive hearings on the treaty next year. The panel has kept the treaty on the shelf for the past two years.

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this report.