August 5, 2010 :: Washington Post :: News
Senate Foreign Relations committee Chairman John Kerry announced this week that the New START treaty will not reach the full Senate until after the August recess. Republican opposition is turning on, among other things, concerns about the possibility that the treaty might hamper future U.S. missile defenses.
Jon Kyl and others are using the debate to extract more solid commitments from the administration on funding nuclear force modernization in the coming years. Despite being outnumbered, the Republicans on the committee have some leverage because so far the only member of their ranks to come out in explicit support of the treaty is Richard Lugar.
Republicans on the committee and in the larger Senate are also interested in getting a look at some or all of the negotiation record in order to find answers to their concerns about possible ties to U.S. missile defense. Secretary of State Clinton and others have vehemently denied any formal or quid pro quo agreement on BMD.
Senator Kerry could have forced a vote on Tuesday, but held off in order to avoid undue rancor among his Republican colleagues.
Meanwhile, Bill Gertz at "Inside the Ring" reports that Keith Payne's (President, National Institute for Public Policy) recent testimony in the Foreign Relations committee contained strong objections to the treaty because of possible loopholes and compliance laxity in the treaty language; Payne also spoke of reports of forthcoming Russian deployment of a nuclear cruise missile and the addition of more warheads onto its SS-27 ICBM platform. (Article)
