Bill Clinton: “Well, to answer the first question, let me say I had the occasion to run into three Ambassadors last night, of nations…”

“Well, to answer the first question, let me say I had the occasion to run into three Ambassadors last night, of nations that strongly support the test ban treaty. And they were concerned. They didn't know what to say to their governments back home. And what I told them was that we were in a battle with the new isolationists in the Republican Party. They see this treaty against the backdrop of the failure to pay the U.N. dues and the failure to shoulder some of our other responsibilities, the failure to pass a bill that would meet our obligations to the Middle East peace process and our obligations to keep working with the Russians to take down their nuclear arsenal. But what I told them was the American people always get it right, and we are not going to reverse 40 years of commitment on nonproliferation, that the treaty is still on the Senate calendar, that it will be considered, that we have to keep working forward, and that I have no intention of doing anything other than honoring the obligations of the treaty imposed on the United States. So I urged them not to overreact, to make clear their opposition to what the Senate did, but to stay with us and believe in the United States because the American people want us to lead toward nonproliferation. Now, as to the second element, there were a number of partisan considerations, including some bad feelings between the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, because the Republicans didn't want to bring this up at all, and then they didn't give us a legitimate process when they did. If you compare the debates here, one day of hearings here, with 14 days on the Chemical Weapons Convention, over 20 days on the INF Treaty under President Reagan, this was not a legitimate process. Now, I know some people made some personal remarks on the floor of the Senate in the debate, but you know, it's been my experience that very often in politics when a person is taking a position that he simply cannot defend, the only defense is to attack the opponent. And that's what I took it as, a form of flattery. They knew they didn't have a very strong case, and so they were looking for some excuse for otherwise inexcusable conduct, and it didn't bother me a bit. I think it only exposed----”