By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — Russia warned the United States Senate on Monday not to rewrite the new arms control treaty being debated on Capitol Hill as American lawmakers clashed about the politics of ratification in the waning days of the Congressional session.
Republican critics of the treaty, known as New Start, offered more amendments to the treaty’s language on verification and launcher limits. But any change to the treaty text would require both countries to return to the negotiating table, and Moscow made it clear that senators had to accept the treaty or reject it as it is, without amendments.
“I can only underscore that the strategic nuclear arms treaty, worked out on the strict basis of parity, in our view fully answers to the national interests of Russia and the United States,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, told the Interfax news agency on Monday. “It cannot be opened up and become the subject of new negotiations.”
The Russian statement provoked a sharp response from the leading Republican treaty opponent, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked of returning to the negotiating table to improve the treaty. “Unless you think the U.S. Constitution was really stupid to give the Senate a role in this, it doesn’t seem there’s anything wrong with the Senate saying, ‘You got about nine-tenths of it right.’ ”
The Senate floor debate on New Start turned increasingly harsh as supporters of the treaty prepared for a procedural vote on Tuesday to close off further discussion. The treaty’s fate appeared to be entangled by unrelated factors, including an acrimonious deadlock over a spending bill, anger among some Republicans over passage of legislation ending the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, and the widespread view that approval of the treaty would help rejuvenate a weakened president.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, went to the floor on Monday to elaborate on why he would vote against the treaty, a stance he declared on Sunday. He said the treaty’s verification measures were inadequate, citing a classified report by a fellow Republican senator. And he warned that nonbinding language in the treaty preamble could ultimately inhibit development of American missile defense systems.
Mr. McConnell accused President Obama and the Democrats of politicizing the treaty by pressing to ratify it before a new Senate takes office in January, with five more Republicans than the current Senate.
“We should wait until every one of them is addressed,” Mr. McConnell said of his criticisms of the treaty. “Our top concern should be the safety and security of our nation, not some politician’s desire to declare a political victory and host a press conference before the end of the year.”
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, responded heatedly to the notion that the treaty was being rushed. He said that Democrats had already put off consideration of the treaty 13 times at the request of Republicans, and that even after those delays, the Senate had already spent more time debating it than it had the first Start treaty or the Treaty of Moscow signed by President George W. Bush.
“This treaty is in front of the United States Senate not because of some political schedule,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s because the Republicans asked us to delay it. We wanted to hold this before the election. And what was the argument then by our friends on the other side of the aisle? ‘Oh no, please don’t do that. That’ll politicize our treaty.’ ”
Mr. Kerry added: “Having accommodated their interests, they now come back and turn around and say: ‘Oh, you guys are terrible. You’re bringing this treaty up at the last minute.’ I mean, is there no shame, ever, with respect to the arguments that are made sometimes on the floor of the United States Senate?”
The treaty would limit each side to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed launchers seven years after ratification. It would also resume onsite inspections that lapsed last December when the original Start treaty expired.
The Senate planned to vote on Monday on two amendments to the treaty that were proposed by Republicans. One, from Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, would triple the number of inspections each year, to 54 from 18. Republicans have criticized the treaty for calling for fewer inspections than the original Start treaty, which specified 28 a year.
Administration officials and Pentagon generals have said that the new verification system would be adequate because the inspections would be more intensive and include new elements, like unique identifying tags for each weapon. They noted that the Soviet Union had 70 nuclear facilities to inspect under the first Start treaty, compared with just 35 today.
The other amendment on the table, sponsored by Senator John Thune of South Dakota, would increase the limit on deployed launchers to 720 from 700. He argued that the slightly higher limit would better accommodate American plans for deployment. Generals have said 700 would be enough, and the treaty allows each side to have an additional 100 launchers that are not deployed.
Meeting in a rare Sunday session, the Senate voted 60 to 32 to reject an amendment proposed by Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, to insert language into the preamble about the importance of tactical weapons.
“Let’s tell the negotiators, go back to the table and at least agree that the interrelationship between strategic and tactical weapons is a really, really important issue and we’re not just going to go on like we have over the last 40 years,” Mr. Risch said.
No Russian-American treaty has ever addressed tactical weapons, but the two sides have said they hoped to negotiate an agreement on them after New Start is ratified. Mr. Kerry said Mr. Risch’s amendment would not curb tactical weapons.
“Not only would it not do that,” Mr. Kerry said, “it would set back the effort to try to get those reductions, because the Russians will not engage in that discussion if you can’t ratify the treaty.” For the New Start treaty, Mr. Kerry added, passing the amendment would mean “it’s dead.”
The White House dismissed the statement by Mr. McConnell, who stood by Mr. Obama’s side just two days ago for the signing of a tax-cut agreement. “We respect Senator McConnell’s view, but weren’t surprised by it, and we certainly were not counting on his vote,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.
Mr. Kyl, however, was a different story. The White House had spent months negotiating with him in the hope of securing his support, including agreeing to a 10-year, $85 billion program to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.
Even after Mr. Kyl said last month that there was not enough time to deal with the treaty before the end of the year, the White House kept trying to win him over, an effort that appeared increasingly futile in recent days. Mr. Kyl led the Senate opposition to the treaty, with his statement on Sunday saying that he would “absolutely” vote against the treaty in its current form coming as the final blow to the White House campaign.
It remained an open question whether the statements by Mr. McConnell and Mr. Kyl would influence the handful of wavering Republican senators who will decide whether the treaty is approved.
One Republican senator who had previously signaled willingness to support the treaty, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, suggested on Sunday that he would not. Mr. Graham cited the sour mood engendered by the Democrats’ forcing votes on other topics in recent days, including the bill on gays in the military that passed on Saturday.
“I’m not going to vote for Start,” Mr. Graham said on “Face the Nation” on CBS, “until I hear from the Russians that they understand we can develop four stages of missile defense, and if we do, they won’t withdraw from the treaty.”
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats said they were confident that they had enough votes, and Mr. Obama worked the phones calling senators to shore up support. To get the required two-thirds majority to ratify a treaty, at least nine Republican votes are needed. Four Republicans have said they support it, two others voted for it in committee and seem likely to vote for final approval, and about seven or eight others have said they lean toward it or hope to vote for it if their concerns are addressed.
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