The US Senate seems certain to reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in spite of warnings from some world leaders that this would lead to a new nuclear arms race.
The Senate debate opened yesterday and the vote is planned for early next week. But opposition to the treaty by the Republicans ensures that there will not be the necessary two-thirds majority for ratification.
President Clinton and the leading members of his administration have pleaded with Republican senators to approve the treaty which he signed in 1996.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, told the Foreign Relations Committee that "it would be a national security tragedy if the world's greatest deliberative body killed a treaty that our nation has sought for 40 years". In an article in the New York Times yesterday, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany warn that rejection of the treaty "would give great encouragement to proliferators" and "would also expose a fundamental divergence within NATO". President Jacques Chirac of France, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, write that "the decisions we take now will help determine, for generations to come, the safety of the world we bequeath to our children". The leaders dismiss fears expressed by opponents of the treaty, which bans all nuclear weapons tests, that some countries could cheat. "We will not be relying on the good will of a rogue state to allow inspectors on to its territory. Under the treaty, a global network of stations is being set up, using four different technologies to identify nuclear tests . . . we know it will work," the leaders write.
In the US, opinion polls show overwhelming support for ratification among the public, but Republicans complain that the Clinton administration allowed dangerous loopholes when negotiating the treaty.
Britain and France are the only nuclear powers to have ratified the treaty signed by 150 countries but which does not go into force until approved by the 44 countries which are believed to have nuclear capability. Only 24 have ratified.
President Clinton is being criticised for not working to ensure a two-thirds majority in the Senate for the treaty, which is one of the main foreign policy initiatives of his presidency. The White House was taken by surprise when the Republican leadership suddenly announced that the treaty would be debated this week.
Faced with the near-certainty of defeat, the White House and Democratic senators are seeking to have the vote postponed indefinitely.
If the Senate rejects the treaty it is feared that Russia and China would follow suit.
Other countries such as India, Pakistan and North Korea which are believed to have first-generation nuclear weapons would also be encouraged to press on with their development, the supporters of the treaty argue.
President Clinton last night called on the Senate to postpone the ratification vote. "I have asked them to put it off because we don't have the votes," he said in Ottawa, Canada. "It is clear now that the level of opposition to the treaty and the time it would take to craft the necessary safeguards to get the necessary votes are simply not there."