June 19, 1973
Page 20270
TEST BAN OPPORTUNITY DURING SUMMIT
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, a week ago, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Senate Resolution 67 by a 14 to 1 vote, calling on the President to take immediate steps to achieve a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
On Friday, a letter was sent to the President urging that he act on the recommendations contained within that resolution. I would hope that this matter would be formally raised by the President in his meeting with General Secretary Brezhnev. Clearly, this is a subject on which the groundwork has been laid for the past 10 years.
The resolution states that it is "the sense of the Senate that the President of the United States first, should propose an immediate suspension on underground nuclear testing to remain in effect so long as the Soviet Union abstains from underground testing, and second, should set forth promptly a new proposal to the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other nations for a permanent treaty to ban all nuclear tests."
I introduced this measure on February 20, 1973 along with Senators HART, MATHIAS, MUSKIE, HUMPHREY, and CASE.
It is now cosponsored by 34 Senators.
The letter reads:
DEAR Mr. PRESIDENT: We are writing as co-sponsors of Senate Resolution 67 which was passed by a 14-1 vote of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee late this week.
Today we are urging you to act on the recommendations contained within that resolution because of the unique and compelling opportunity presented by the visit of Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev to this country.
We urge you to propose to the Soviet leader a suspension of underground nuclear testing to remain in effect so long as the Soviet Union abstains. We urge as well that you set forth promptly a new proposal based on the realities of 1973, to achieve what we all desire – a final and permanent halt to the testing of nuclear weapons.
It was ten years ago this month that a temporary suspension of testing was announced while new negotiations with the Soviet Union began for a permanent treaty. (That initiative led to the conclusion of a treaty less than two months later.)
For the past decade, we have failed to complete the obligation imposed on us by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, and reaffirmed countless times thereafter, to determinedly seek a comprehensive test ban treaty. We have failed to up-date our negotiating position despite vast changes in seismology, in satellite reconnaissance, in the potency of our strategic arms, and in our improving relations with the Soviet Union.
SALT I established an impressive and significant limitation on the quantitative arms race. A CTB would complement that accord by restricting the qualitative arms race. It would demonstrate convincingly to the world that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are finally willing to put an end to the pursuit of marginal new improvements in nuclear weapons which cost large sums but which buy no real increase in security.
As you stated in Moscow to the Soviet people, "in an unchecked arms race between two great nations, there would be no winners, only losers. By setting this limitation together, the people of both our nations, and of all nations, can be winners."
A new initiative to achieve a comprehensive test-ban treaty would surely be in the interest of world peace.
Sincerely,
Edward M. Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey, Charles McC. Mathias, Edward W. Brooke, Quentin N. Burdick, Alan Cranston, Mark 0. Hatfield, Harold E. Hughes, Walter F. Mondale, Adlai E. Stevenson III, Harrison A. Williams, Vance Hartke, Frank E. Moss, Edmund S. Muskie, Clifford P. Case, Philip A.Hart, Birch Bayh, Dick Clark, Mike Gravel, William D. Hathaway, George S. McGovern, Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., John V. Tunney, Floyd K. Haskell, J. Wm. Fulbright.