Albright: Senate defeat of test ban treaty has hurt U.S.

October 18, 1999
Web posted at: 12:17 p.m. EDT (1617 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has hurt the U.S. internationally but will have no effect on the country's nuclear weapons program because the nation will continue to honor the treaty's ban on testing, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says.

But anti-treaty senators said the Senate would defeat the treaty again if President Bill Clinton tries to resubmit it for ratification.

Albright, interviewed on CNN's "Late Edition," said her counterparts from other countries were mystified by Wednesday's 51-48 Senate vote against the treaty, which was far below the 67 votes needed to ratify.

"I've gotten calls all week ... four of my fellow foreign ministers, trying to figure out what has happened here," she said. "It's very serious. It has hurt us internationally."

But Albright did not say whether the Clinton Administration would submit the pact for the Senate to reconsider its first rejection of a major foreign policy pact since the League of Nations treaty in 1920.

White House chief of staff John Podesta said on ABC's "This Week" that "the treaty remains before the Senate." The administration will "continue to press the Senate to consider it and to respond to the arguments that have been made," he said.

But two main opponents of the treaty said there was no chance the treaty would come before the Senate again.

"It will not come up again, because the United States cannot unilaterally amend the treaty," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) on ABC. "It will not come up again, and if it does, it will be defeated."

Sen James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said Clinton's problem was that he failed to inform the Senate before he signed the treaty in 1996. Had he done that, the Senate would have made clear it never would have given its advice and consent required under the Constitution for a treaty's ratification.

"What the president should have done is come to the Senate first and say, `This is what we want to do. ... Do you think that this is going be consented to by the Senate, if we do promulgate this?'" Inhofe said.

Because of the treaty's flaws in enforcement, the Senate would have told the president that it would not back the treaty, Inhofe said.

But Albright blamed the Senate's "casual" attitude on the treaty's defeat.

"I think that what happened here was that the Senate kind of took a casual look at it. I called it a drive-by consideration of a major treaty," she said. "And what we were calling for and had been for a long time -- I'd given speeches on it and testified to it, the importance of serious consideration of this treaty."

The treaty has been signed by 154 nations and ratified by 51, but by only 26 of the 44 countries potentially capable of producing nuclear weapons. Albright said Clinton was the first world leader to sign it.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Web site

Albright: Senate defeat of test ban treaty has hurt U.S.

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Monday, October 18, 1999