S.A.L.T. fight starts

Press, 10 July 1979, Page 8

S.A.L.T. fight starts

NZ PA-Reuter Washington The United States Administration has begun a crucial battle for Senate approval of the new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty — S.AI..T. II — signed by President Carter and the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in Vienna on June 18.

A long, probably bitter campaign starts with a month of hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and will end with a Senate vote, perhaps in November. A two-thirds majority is needed to ratify the treaty which puts curbs on major weapons in the nuclear arsenals of the two super-Powers.

The Senate Democratic leader, (Mr Robert Bryd) said at the week-end that the treaty would not get the majority if a vote were today. It might be November, but this was by no means certain, he said. The Soviet Union has said it will accept no changes to S.A.L.T. II and the Carter Administration will fight to resist efforts to rewrite some of its key provisions. The Secretary of State

(Mr Cyrus Vance) and the Secretary of Defence (Mr Harold Brown) will be the first witnesses and are expected to tell the committee that S.A.L.T. II is in the interests of American security and will make the world safer.

Opponents of S.A.L.T. II will have their first chance to testify later this week. The Former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, is also due to appear on July 31. i Senator Byrd, who says he i has not made up his mind how to vote on the treaty, » spent last week in the Soviet Union explaining the i Senate’s role. He said he thought Soviet leaders now ■ understood better what sort of amendments the Senate : might make. Senator Byrd said the Sen- | ate might amend the resolution of ratification to express its reservations without changing the actual text of the treaty. “I believe, based on my ■ conversations with Soviet leaders, • they have a better understanding of this, ’ the senator said on television. He said the Senate should

make it clear that the Soviet Backfire bomber was not to be used as an intercontinental bomber. He said he also told the Soviets many senators were concerned that restrictions on U2 spy plane flights over Turkey would hamper verification of the treaty. The former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation commander, Alexander Haig, has said in an interview published in New York that the treaty requires careful study. He stopped short of saying he would oppose the treaty, but he told “Newsweek” magazine of his concern over the Backfire bomber and certain anomalies concerning heavy missiles and their verification. General Haig said the argument that Senate opposition to the treaty would lead to another increase in Soviet military spending was empty rhetoric.

“With 13 or 14 per cent of the Soviet gross national product already going into a relentless build-up (versus 5 per cent of our G.N.P. for defence) their economy is already on a war footing. . .”