How To Wreck the Treaty

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

They are officially known as reservations, but lawmakers call them "killer amendments." Attached to a treaty by the Senate, they require the President to renegotiate certain provisions. Although Reagan is expected to have little trouble getting the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the INF accord, such likely opponents of the treaty as North Carolina's Jesse Helms and Wyoming's Malcolm Wallop may aim to scuttle it by mustering a majority in favor of amendments that sound reasonable but would prove lethal.

Defenders will try to protect the pact by making sure that any refinements are expressed in the form of "declarations" or "understandings" that do not require negotiating a revised treaty with Moscow. California Democrat Alan Cranston, who will be a leader in the fight for ratification, says Senate approval will ultimately depend not on "who's for or against it" but on "who will withstand the killer amendments and who won't."

Among the issues that will be addressed by either reservations or more benign understandings:

Conventional force levels. Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn will hold hearings in the Armed Services Committee on steps the West should take to reduce the Warsaw Pact's superiority in non-nuclear weapons. Nunn and others believe that imbalance may be more threatening with the elimination of Euromissiles. He is said to be considering a unilateral declaration of objectives that NATO should achieve after passage of the treaty. INF opponents may push for a more lethal amendment that would bar the President from carrying out the treaty's provisions unless the conventional-arms imbalance in Europe is redressed. Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd said last week he thought such a restriction "could be a killer."

Verification. The INF pact has precedent-setting provisions that allow the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to inspect each other's missile sites for evidence of cheating. Some conservative Senators, however, may want an amendment providing for the investigation on demand of "suspect sites" not enumerated in the treaty. That would be strongly opposed by both the White House and the Pentagon. In fact, the Soviets agreed to this idea in principle earlier this year, but the U.S. rejected the notion after defense officials realized it would work both ways; they did not want Soviet inspectors poking around classified facilities in the U.S.

Human rights and regional conflicts. Lawmakers could link ratification of the INF agreement to issues like a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan or an easing of the restrictions on Jewish emigration. Many Senators might find it hard to vote against such politically popular measures. But because these provisions have little real relevance to the missile accord, they could probably be shot down before reaching the Senate floor for a vote.

Compliance. Opponents' best hope might be an amendment requiring the President to certify Soviet adherence to all other arms-control agreements before the INF pact could be carried out. "The beauty of this kind of amendment is that it is very easily understandable to the average American," says Dan Casey, head of the American Conservative Union. "You don't sign contracts with people who have not honored past contracts." Reagan has been backpedaling on this thorny topic. In a report to Congress on arms-control negotiations last March, the President cited compliance with deals in the past as an "essential prerequisite" for future agreements. Yet in a similar report this month, that prerequisite had been watered down to become "an essential element of my arms-control policy." Although such an amendment would not require that the treaty be renegotiated, it would make it difficult for Reagan to put the pact into effect: the Administration went on record a week before the summit with a list of allegations about how Moscow has violated the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

One obstacle to ratification may be the way the Administration is treating that ABM accord. The Administration insists that what the Senate was told by + Government witnesses during ratification hearings is not relevant to what the treaty really means on the subject of space-based defense. This outrages Nunn, who threatens to review the entire negotiation record of the INF pact unless the President and his advisers abandon the notion that they can reinterpret a treaty after the Senate has ratified it.

The President is going to need all the help he can get from top Republican Senators. "It is only when the senior leadership and the White House work in tandem that people will be able to not vote for something Wallop or Helms introduces," says a veteran Capitol Hill staffer. He adds, "A lot will depend on Dole." Fortunately for Reagan, the Senate minority leader and presidential candidate finally seemed ready to support the accord, after weeks of mealymouthed hedging. Last week Bob Dole called the INF treaty a "watershed accomplishment." He also said he did not foresee "any amendment that's going to require renegotiation."

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Washington