Missile defence sticking point with Republicans
President Barack Obama wrapped up enough support yesterday to win Senate approval for a strategic nuclear arms pact with Russia later this week, a key step in his drive to improve ties with Moscow and curb atomic weapons proliferation.
The new START treaty cleared a procedural hurdle in the US Senate by a vote of 67-28 as 11 Republicans joined Democrats in a decision to limit further debate. The treaty will move to a final vote today after lawmakers deal with a rash of last-minute amendments.
Obama’s Democrats need a two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate for final approval of the treaty. Senator John Kerry, who led floor debate as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he expected 70 senators to ultimately vote in favour of the accord.
“We are on the brink of writing the next chapter in the 40-year history of wrestling with the threat of nuclear weapons,” Kerry said.
The treaty, which would cut strategic atomic weapons deployed by each country to no more than 1,550 within seven years, was signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April.
It is a centrepiece of Obama’s bid to “re-set” relations with Russia, which has been increasingly cooperative on issues related to US national security, from curbing Iran’s nuclear programme to the war in Afghanistan.
“This treaty will make America safer and restore our leadership in global efforts to stop nuclear proliferation,” Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said.
Senators yesterday debated and defeated a series of amendments aimed at changing the treaty’s handling of weapons inspections, data exchanges and other issues. Changes that would amend the treaty would effectively kill it by forcing a renegotiation with Russia.
At least 12 Republicans have said that they will vote with Democrats to approve the pact, which would give Obama his third major victory on Capitol Hill in less than a week.
He earlier won repeal of the US ban on gays serving openly in the military, and passage of an US$858 billion (RM2.69 trillion) deal with Republicans to extend expiring tax cuts and spur economic growth.
Republican opponents of the accord, angered by the their inability to stop the march towards passage, charged the Obama administration had negotiated a bad treaty that let Russia limit US missile defence options when the real strategic threat was not Moscow but states such as North Korea and Iran.
“Nothing that he has done has convinced me that he is committed to missile defence,” Senator Lindsey Graham told a news conference, saying Obama was effectively “giving the Russians a veto” over US missile defence plans.
The Senate’s top two Republicans — Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip Jon Kyl — have announced they will vote against START, saying lawmakers haven’t had enough time to fully consider the treaty.
But the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, Lamar Alexander, joined Democrats yesterday in agreeing to end debate and move to approve the pact.
“I will vote to ratify the New Start Treaty . . . because it leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come, and because the president has committed to an $85 billion, 10-year plan to make sure that those weapons work,” Alexander declared in a Senate speech.
Alexander’s state of Tennessee is home to one of the nuclear facilities that will receive billions of dollars in modernisation funding under an agreement worked out between lawmakers and the White House.
There has been far less public or political debate over the treaty in Russia. The Russian State Duma has yet to approve the accord and Medvedev has made clear that parliament should not ratify the treaty until US Senate approval is certain.
Konstantin Kosachyov, the pro-Kremlin chairman of the international affairs committee, said Russian lawmakers would carefully examine the US Senate’s resolution of ratification and other declarations before proceeding with their own vote, which could conceivably be held this year.
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