WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday a new strategic arms treaty with Russia is too crucial to delay.
Her concerns were echoed later at a news conference by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
"The ... leadership across the board in the United States military supports moving forward with this treaty, and I hope we can do it as rapidly as possible," he said.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the Republican Party's point man on the ratification of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, said earlier he thought the treaty ratification should be delayed until the next session of Congress because of "unresolved issues."
But Clinton told senators from both parties "nuclear weapons pose the unparalleled threat to our world," and 18 congressional hearings already have been held on the proposed treaty.
"Now, recently some have suggested we should hit the pause button, that it's too difficult to do this treaty in a lame-duck session," Clinton said. "I strongly disagree. This is exactly what the American people expect us to do: to come together and do what is necessary to protect our country."
Clinton said: "I'm not sure that everybody really understands that when the prior treaty expired, we lost the ability to have inspectors on the ground. We need to get our inspectors back into Russia after a gap of nearly a year. As our intelligence and defense colleagues have repeatedly noted, we are much better off with New START than without it."
The secretary said New START is "critical to our bilateral relationship with Russia. We have enhanced our cooperation to the benefit of our country on Iran, on Afghanistan, on nuclear non-proliferation, on counter-terrorism and on counter-narcotics. That's why our entire military leadership, as well as six former secretaries of state, five former secretaries of defense, three former national security advisers and seven former commanders of U.S. Strategic Command, support this treaty and support it now."
At his news conference with Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of the Israeli General Staff, in Arlington, Va., south of Washington, Mullen said, "I am extremely concerned that we ... will be without a treaty with Russia for one year."
Russia and the United States have 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, Mullen said, "and we have shown, historically, that the ability to agree on treaty ... have it ratified, creates an incredibly important deterrent effect for these catastrophic weapons."
