Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are offering only lukewarm support for a treaty banning chemical weapons that has been signed by the United States and 156 other nations.
Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch urged senators to ratify the pact at a hearing Thursday."I have some misgivings about the wisdom of this treaty," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va.
Sen. James Exon, D-Neb., who said he was undecided, sought assurances that the United States would be able to deter a chemical weapons attack if it joined the treaty.
While acknowledging it would be impossible to detect all violations of the treaty, Shalikashvili and Deutch said the accord would go a long way toward eliminating chemical weapons and is in the U.S. national interest. They said it would help defuse regional instability by making it harder for countries to acquire chemical weapons.
The treaty bans development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and transfer of chemical weapons to any party and prohibits their use. Participating countries would be required to destroy their stockpiles within 10 years, with a possible extension of up to five years in some cases.
The treaty has been signed by 157 nations, including the United States and Russia, which has the world's largest declared stockpile of chemical weapons. It has been ratified by 10 countries, including Norway, Sweden, Spain, Australia and Albania.
"From a military perspective, the chemical weapons convention is clearly in our national interest," Shalikashvili said. "While less than perfect, the verification regime allows for intrusive inspections while protecting national security concerns."
Shalikashvili said "rogue" nations such as Iran, Libya and North Korea would be deterred from using chemical weapons against the United States by its "overwhelming military capability to strike where we want to strike."
He said he believed that was what deterred the Iraqis from using chemical weapons during the gulf war - "the knowledge that we didn't have to use chemical weapons."
Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian civilians in 1983 during the war between the two nations.
But Warner challenged Shalikashvili's notion, suggesting that Saddam Hussein's knowledge that the United States could have used chemical weapons may have been a more effective deterrent.