GOP senators criticize U.S.-Russia arms treaty

Republican senators voiced concerns about the new U.S. arms-control treaty with Russia yesterday, asserting that it would limit the development of U.S. missile defenses and fail to reduce Moscow's stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons.

The administration needs the support of two-thirds of the Senate to ratify the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which would further reduce the number of U.S. and Russian strategic delivery systems and nuclear warheads.

Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that the administration's ability to win GOP support for the treaty could depend on verification and enforcement mechanisms in the pact, as well as plans for U.S. warhead modernization. He urged "accelerating the timetable for producing the National Intelligence Estimate and a formal verification assessment related to the treaty."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the administration's arguments for the treaty's approval during a two-hour committee hearing. While all the Democrats at the session voiced their support, no Republicans joined in.

Lugar, who has worked on nuclear disarmament issues for 30 years, came the closest to indicating that he would support the treaty, saying: "To deliberately forgo a strategic nuclear arms control regime with Russia would be an extremely precarious strategy."

Perhaps the sharpest exchanges of the hearing focused on whether the treaty will inhibit U.S. missile defense plans. In its preamble, the new treaty "recognizes" a relationship between offensive and defensive weapons; in a statement attached to the treaty, Russia said that it could withdraw from the pact if its missile stockpile, once reduced, could be stopped by U.S. defensive systems.