Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Chemical Weapons Convention is a fine arms control agreement. It can stand on its own. But the U.S. Senate has a constitutional duty to consider carefully all the implications of treaties submitted for its advice and consent to ratification. Such careful consideration often enables us to spot aspects of an agreement that merit clarification, or implementation matters on which we would be well advised to require particular executive branch policies. The Chemical Weapons Convention is no exception to this rule. Over the years since its signing over 4 years ago, near the end of the Bush administration, we have identified several areas in which clarifying the convention's intent or establishing requirements regarding executive branch implementation would be useful. In addition, there were several areas in which some of my colleagues wanted assurances that went beyond those that the executive branch or I could give them, even though we thought that such reassurances ought to suffice. In many such cases, the easiest way of providing the needed assurances was to codify them in a condition to the resolution of ratification.”