Joe Lieberman: “I was opposed to the amendment offered by Senator Inhofe. Quite frankly, I believe the consequences if this amendment…”

“I was opposed to the amendment offered by Senator Inhofe. Quite frankly, I believe the consequences if this amendment passed would have been extremely deleterious to our foreign policy. Mr. President, everyone should recognize that his amendment is nothing more than a thinly-veiled threat to delay NATO enlargement and to ensure that we won't have NATO enlargement for a significant period of time. It is very clear that President Clinton can't and won't submit the Kyoto Protocol for Senate ratification until the conditions he has set are met--meaningful participation by developing countries. The Administration is not in a position of saying now when that milestone will be achieve, but it probably won't be soon. So a vote for this amendment is a vote to stop NATO expansion. But even if you oppose NATO expansion, you should oppose this amendment because the approach it takes is without precedent and would have a significant impact on how the country conducts foreign policy. Let me say also that I was a member of the Senate observer group to the Kyoto conference last December. There has never been a more complicated, difficult international negotiation attempted. I believe that the conference was a historic success: more than 160 countries recognized that the common threat of climate change was more important than each nation's separate anxiety about the immediate impact of an agreement.”