Treaty

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton faced the stinging defeat of a prized foreign policy objective last night, as the Senate moved toward an agreement to delay voting on a nuclear test ban treaty indefinitely.Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott tentatively agreed to withdraw the treaty without a vote after Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, promised not to push for a ratification vote until after Clinton leaves office.The president's Democratic allies in the Senate are short of the two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, needed for passage of the treaty.

MIREYA Moscoso, the new president of Panama, is not the only foreign leader educated in the United States, but she is the first with a degree in interior decorating from Miami-Dade Community College.Ms. Moscoso, elected in May, heads a party that is weaker in the legislature than its opposition. In recent days, she hammered out agreements with minor parties to give her a bare working majority, vulnerable to defections.Her government will take over the Panama Canal on Dec. 31, under the treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and the Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos in 1977.

THE SENATE'S defeat Wednesday evening of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty dealt a reckless blow to four decades of bipartisan efforts to ensure U.S. national security.The United States has complied with the terms of this treaty since the end of the Bush administration and will go on doing so. The treaty is an effort to halt nuclear weapons development by the 43 other countries capable of it.Instead, the Senate message was, go ahead.The main valid criticism of the treaty is that it seeks to lock in the overwhelming U.S. advantage over other countries.

WASHINGTON -- As outrage spread across Europe over the acquittal of a Marine pilot in the deaths of 20 Alpine skiers, a "shocked" Italian prime minister appealed directly to President Clinton yesterday for justice, demanding that someone in the chain of command be punished.Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema made it clear that he could accept the acquittal by a military court of Marine Corps Capt. Richard J. Ashby, whose low-flying jet clipped two gondola wires a year ago and sent 20 vacationers to their deaths in the Italian Alps.

WASHINGTON -- A sweeping nuclear test-ban treaty is facing almost certain rejection by the Senate after supporters and opponents scrambled last night to avert a vote they feared could produce a political and diplomatic embarrassment.Both sides acknowledged that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiated by President Clinton in 1996, was far short of the two-thirds majority required for ratification.Democrats favor the treaty as necessary to prevent the further development of nuclear weapons.

WASHINGTON -- In a crushing setback for the Clinton administration's foreign policy, the Senate overwhelmingly rejected last night a treaty to ban underground nuclear testing, a goal that U.S. presidents have sought since 1958.The vote marked the first defeat of an international security accord since 1919, when the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles that created the League of Nations after World War I.The tally, with 48 in favor and 51 against, fell far short of the 67 votes and two-thirds majority required to ratify a treaty.

MOSCOW -- Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, hoping to smooth U.S.-Russian relations in advance of a critical trip to Washington next week, intensified efforts yesterday to win ratification of the stalled START II missile treaty.The Communist-dominated Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, opened the way Monday to renewed debate on the treaty but set no timetable. In a prime-time television interview, Primakov said ratification of the pact is essential to Russia's long-range security and relations with other countries.

1948: Gandhi assassinated1948: Kinsey sex report1948: Long-playing record invented1949: NATO treaty signed

Protesters were right to push for ratification of women's rights pactThe Sun's two-paragraph summary "Helms has congress women removed from hearing" (Oct. 28) was dissapointing on several fronts.It provided readers no background on the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This important treaty establishes international standards for the treatment of women and girls.The treaty has led to such tangible advances in gender equality as new constitutional provisions concerning women's basic rights in such countries as Brazil, South Africa and Uganda.

WASHINGTON -- Industry opponents of a treaty to fight global warming have drafted an ambitious proposal to spend millions of dollars to persuade the public that a 1992 environmental accord is based on shaky science.Among their ideas is a campaign to recruit scientists who share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can persuade journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that trap the sun's heat near Earth.

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed Wednesday to open negotiations on a treaty that could slash nuclear arsenals by one-third as part of what they said would be a new era in relations between the two countries. The agreement, the result of the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders and coming on the eve of Thursday's Group of 20 economic summit, included a promise by Obama to visit Moscow this summer to pursue the talks. "Over the last several years, the relationship between our two countries has been allowed to drift," Obama said.

DUBLIN, Ireland - European leaders were scrambling yesterday to find a new path to a more powerful and manageable European Union after Irish voters rejected a treaty meant to bolster the alliance's government. The rejection threw into doubt nearly a decade of efforts to overcome widespread public skepticism and develop a European constitution. The reforms would create a powerful European presidency and diplomatic corps and improve cooperation on law enforcement and defense. Because the measure must be ratified by all 27 member states of the alliance, Ireland's rejection struck a potentially fatal blow.

On July 24, the Associated Press announced, "A spacewalking astronaut, Clayton C. Anderson, discarded a camera mounting and an ammonia tank weighing more than half a ton at the International Space Station. The outdated equipment ... joined more than 9,000 pieces of orbital debris already being tracked from Earth." Space debris poses a huge problem for our future - a problem that could be made much worse by U.S. plans to introduce weapons into space. A piece of debris in low Earth orbit travels at 17,000 miles per hour.

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir V. Putin suspended his country's participation in a Cold War-era conventional arms-control pact yesterday, which is looked upon as a cornerstone of European security, further deepening the rift between the Kremlin and Western governments. By imposing a moratorium on its involvement in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, or CFE, Russia is no longer bound by the treaty's limits on the size of its conventional weapons arsenal west of the Ural Mountains.

This is one way to use cluster bombs: Milan Martic, a leader of the breakaway Serbian Krajina Republic, which sought independence from Croatia during the Yugoslav civil wars, avenged a Croatian assault in May 1995 by directing a cluster bomb attack against Zagreb, the capital. It killed at least seven civilians, and injured hundreds. This month, for that and other crimes, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. This is another way to use cluster bombs: When Israel went to war against Hezbollah last summer, it dropped as many as 4 million bomblets on northern Lebanon, according to a United Nations estimate.

Moscow -- President Vladimir V. Putin said yesterday that in protest of U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, Russia will suspend its observance of a treaty limiting the deployment of troops and conventional military equipment in Europe. The announcement, made in Putin's annual speech to parliament, ratcheted up tensions between Russia and the U.S. over the missile system, which Moscow views as a step toward building a much larger system directed at Russia and China.

The anniversary of Dec. 7, 1941, is a reminder that responsibility comes with power and that attempting to evade that responsibility is impossible. On this day, we should not forget that one of the contributing causes of World War II was American isolationism. At the end of the First World War, Europe was devastated, bled white by the butchery of trench warfare. America emerged as the world's sole great power, but it was a role we were unprepared to play. The Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty.

1784: Independence achieved On Jan. 14, 1784, the Treaty of Paris was ratified by the Continental Congress in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. This landmark treaty, which granted America independence from Great Britain, effectively ended the seven-year American Revolutionary War and cleared the way for nationhood without further hostilities. For such a big deal, it was no easy thing to get the treaty ratified. It was a logistical challenge then to gather representatives from all the states in the young republic to form a congressional quorum in Annapolis - which was then the nation's capital.

Dec. 24--1814: The War of 1812 officially ended as the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium.

MOSCOW - A senior Kremlin official declared yesterday that Russia would not ratify the international treaty requiring cuts in the emissions of gases linked to global warming, delivering what could be a fatal blow to years of diplomatic efforts. The official, Andrei Illarionov, said in remarks to reporters and in a subsequent interview that President Vladimir V. Putin had told a group of European business executives that the treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, ran counter to Russia's national interests.