Bumps on the Ratification Road

FOREIGN RELATIONS

When he returned to his Washington apartment one night last week, Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken learned that the President of the U.S., the Secretary of State, and several lesser New Frontiersmen had been trying for hours to reach him. Aiken hurriedly put through a call to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The President, said Rusk, wanted Aiken to join the U.S. delegation going to Moscow for this week's formal signing of the nuclear test ban treaty (see THE WORLD). The Senator hesitated. "Will I be committed to anything?" he asked. "Will I have to sign anything?" Only after he was assured that he could remain uncommitted did Aiken consent to go along.

Delighted to Offend. Across the nation, many citizens in and out of government shared Aiken's wariness toward the test ban treaty. Before boarding the Queen Elizabeth for a "nostalgic" trip to England and the Normandy beaches, former President Eisenhower counseled caution, pointed out that after atmospheric tests were halted in the 1958 moratorium, it was the Russians who first resumed testing. Iowa's Republican Senator Bourke Hickenlooper wanted to know why, after the Russians had rejected a test ban treaty for five years, "suddenly there is a clear sky, the treaty is wrapped up in a week in a sudden and complete reversal."

At the National Press Club, a reporter echoed such misgivings by asking Under Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman whether Russia's record of broken promises did not make the pact worthless. "That is a typical question of a semi-informed person," snapped Harriman. Then, as nervous laughter swept the room, he added: "If I offended anybody, I'm delighted." Chances are he offended a lot of people.

Mail to the White House was running 12 to 1 in favor of the test ban pact, but only 2,000 citizens had written to the President about it in a week, compared to 40,000 during the four weeks of the Cuba crisis. And several Senators reported that in their mail they had heard from as many doubters as rejoicers.

Solid New England. The most urgent question for President Kennedy was not what the Russians would do but what the U.S. Senate would do. Before it can go into effect, the treaty must be ratified in the Senate--by a two-thirds majority. Southern Democrats may be tempted to try to trade off ratification votes for a drastic softening of the President's civil rights bill. And many Senators in both parties remain deeply mistrustful of Russian intentions.

Bent on clearing a road for the treaty in the Senate, Kennedy tried to get two influential Midwestern Republicans, Iowa's Hickenlooper and Illinois' Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, to join the U.S. delegation to Moscow. But both Dirksen and Hickenlooper decided to. stay home. The Republican Senators Kennedy tapped instead were two fellow New Englanders, Aiken and Massachusetts' Leverett Saltonstall, who are high-ranking members of important Senate committees but who wield little influence among Midwestern Republicans. To make Dirksen's absence seem less conspicuous, Kennedy decided to leave behind the Democratic opposite number, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. The Democratic Senators picked to go to Moscow: Arkansas' William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Rhode Island's John Pastore, chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee; Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey and Alabama's John Sparkman, both heads of Foreign Relations subcommittees.

Resigned & Hopeful. Fortifying senatorial wariness toward the test ban treaty were doubts voiced by U.S. scientists. "Very serious questions have to be resolved about this treaty," said Physicist Edward Teller. "I'm inclined to believe that it has extremely great danger." Some scientists hold that the Russians could cheat the ban by setting off small explosions in the atmosphere below the "limit of observability." Nuclear tests in outer space are also possible, though the U.S. is well along in the development of methods for detecting nuclear explosions in space (see SCIENCE).

Even more worrisome to some experts is the possibility that the Russians may already have made a breakthrough in the development of an anti-missile missile as a result of their last test series. But when a newsman brought up that possibility at President Kennedy's press conference, the President declared that "the problem of developing a defense against a missile is beyond us and beyond the Soviets technically. I think many who work in it feel that perhaps it can never be successfully accomplished."

Despite all the doubts and fears, an influential Republican Senator who shares some of the misgivings predicted that when the treaty comes to a vote, probably in mid-September, the tally will run at least 80 to 20 in favor. At his press conference, President Kennedy seemed both resigned to debate and delay and hopeful about the eventual outcome. He was probably right on both counts.

"I think there's nothing wrong with waiting and seeing," he said, but sooner or later "you have to do something. And then you have to vote yes or no. My judgment is that when the testimony is all in this treaty will be ratified."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.