Jeff Bingaman: “today the Senate will provide its long- overdue advice and consent to ratification of the START II Treaty. I believe…”

“today the Senate will provide its long- overdue advice and consent to ratification of the START II Treaty. I believe that this may be the most significant accomplishment that this body will have in this Congress. That will depend on whether our action is followed by similar action in the Russian Duma in the months ahead. I regret that we were not able to take this action months ago. At the end of last March Senator Lugar predicted that the treaty would be ready for Senate debate in May. It should have been, but it wasn't through no fault of the Senator from Indiana. I hope that the 8 months delay has not hurt the treaty's prospects in the Duma. It clearly is overwhelmingly in Russia's interest, as well as our own, that this treaty go into force as soon as possible. Mr. President, this treaty will truly reduce the nuclear danger in ways unimaginable when I entered this body in 1983. Then we argued about nuclear freezes and nuclear build-downs at levels far above those stipulated in START II. Now the United States and Russia are truly reducing their nuclear stockpiles under the START I Treaty that went into force in December 1994 and we will reduce far further under START II. Land-based multiple warhead missiles, the most destablizing weapon of the cold war, will be eliminated. Arsenals in both sides will be reduced to 3,500 warheads and bombs.…”