Partisan pettiness

Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican of North Carolina, apparently does not yet recognize the distinction between narrow partisan squabbles and higher national interests.

In a disturbing display of pettiness, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee threatens to block action on all pending treaties, conventions and ambassadorial nominations unless he gets his way on a pet project to reorganize the State Department bureaucracy.

The prime victims of this threat would be two international arms control agreements vitally important to American security -- the international convention restricting chemical weapons and the second strategic arms agreement with Russia, which locks in steep warhead cuts on both sides.

Both agreements were originally negotiated by the Bush administration. Both enjoy bipartisan support. First submitted for ratification by the Clinton administration in 1993, both ran out of time in the last Congress. They would probably reach the Senate floor this fall with a good chance of being ratified before the distractions of the presidential campaign were Helms not holding them back.

The Chemical Weapons Convention, signed by 159 countries, would ban development, production, acquisition or use of all chemical weapons and destruction of current stockpiles, backed up by short-notice inspections. Private chemical plants would also be inspected to assure that chemicals with both civilian and military uses were not being diverted for weapons purposes. The treaty incorporates every major American negotiating objective.

Helms earlier raised some substantive questions about how the treaty would operate, but the administration reports that these have now been satisfactorily answered. The quarrel over State Department reorganization seems to be the only thing holding up committee hearings.

The strategic arms treaty would reduce the number of nuclear warheads carried on American and Russian submarines, bombers and long-range missiles by about two-thirds to approximately 3,500 each. There is every reason to ratify that treaty quickly, given the possibility of a more nationalist Russian Parliament emerging from elections this fall.

The reorganization bill pressed by Helms, which has been blocked by Senate Democrats, would fold the Agency for International Development, the U.S. Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency into the State Department, probably saving a few million dollars in operating costs. There may be some merit to aspects of the proposal, although the information agency should retain its independence. But such micromanaging of the executive branch is better done through negotiation than by congressional fiat.

-- The New York Times