A key Republican senator who helped vote down US ratification of a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTBT) 10 years ago, said he would now consider supporting it.
Senator John McCain, the last Republican presidential nominee, said he still had concerns, but could support the treaty if they are addressed before another vote.
In a separate interview, another important Republican who voted against the treaty in 1999, Senator Richard Lugar, said he has not yet made up his mind.
US President Barack Obama has said that ratifying the treaty was a priority as he tries to reverse the spread of nuclear weapons and reduce the threat that they will be used.
The two Republicans could prove pivotal for Senate ratification.
Even if all Democrats and their allies back the treaty, Obama would need the support of at least seven Republicans.
Lugar and McCain are two of the top Republicans on national security and would likely have sway over their colleagues. Lugar is the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee; McCain, Obama’s former presidential opponent, is the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
McCain has embraced Obama’s goal of eliminating all the world’s nuclear weapons and said that a global test ban would be a step forward if it were implemented prudently.
“The devil is in the details,” he said. “If we could get it done, if it is acceptable, then it is a step forward on the path to the president’s goal and mine of a nuclear free world.” Lugar, who is regarded as one of Washington’s leading actors on arms control issues, said that he favored delaying consideration of a treaty at least until after an international conference in May on strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He said he would consider the test ban treaty when it was brought up.
Lugar is currently pressing for the administration to conclude talks with Russia on a follow-on agreement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December. The Republican senator said he is marshaling party votes to ratify that treaty, which would limit US and Russian nuclear arsenals.
He said he does not want an acrimonious debate about a test ban treaty to sap support for START or weaken the US position at the May conference.
“I would postpone consideration,” he said about the test ban treaty.
Some analysts, who follow the issue, say that other Republicans will be watching Lugar and particularly McCain.
“John McCain is one of the only Republican senators who is independent-minded enough to break out of the partisan dividing lines on this issue,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “He has the gravitas to influence others in the caucus.”
When the treaty was submitted for consideration in 1999, both Lugar and McCain expressed concerns about how little time was allowed for debate of a complex issue. They and other opponents also doubted whether the treaty’s monitoring system could detect small underground nuclear test and worried that the soundness of the US
nuclear arsenal would come under question if tests could not be conducted.
Ultimately, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected the pact almost entirely along party lines with a 48-in-favor, 51-against vote.
Negotiated in the 1990s, the treaty specified 44 nuclear-capable states — from Algeria to Vietnam — that must give full formal approval before it can take effect, putting the power of international law and the UN Security Council behind the ban. All but nine of those have ratified, along with the governing bodies of 113 other countries.
Aside from the US, the holdouts among the 44 are China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to