Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I am a little bit flummoxed here because I thought in a conversation I had a couple of days ago with Senator Kerry that side agreements might be all right; that we didn't want to amend the preamble or didn't want to amend the treaty but that we could perhaps do some side agreements. So we structured this as a side agreement just exactly as was done in START I.

Mr. KYL. On the Senator's time, I would be happy to.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, there was no delay in the implementation of the START I agreement because of a requirement that a side agreement be entered into between the then-Soviet Union and the United States on SLCMs. So I don't buy the notion that this necessarily would delay anything. Secondly, we are not talking about tactical missile limitations generally. All we are doing is talking about the same kinds of missiles that were the subject of the side agreement under START I. I suspect that part of the reason was because it is pretty difficult to distinguish as to whether these weapons are being used for a strategic or a tactical purpose. Senator Kerry has said they cannot upset the strategic balance. I simply totally disagree with that proposition. They absolutely can upset the strategic balance, depending upon where they are located or how they intend to be used. That is one of the reasons I suspect they were limited under the START I treaty. My colleague said they can't threaten our submarine fleet at sea and they pose only a limited threat to ICBM sites. Well, that may be the opinion of our experts. They could sure threaten our submarine bases in Washington State at King's Bay. They could take out bases or other assets we have. In fact, let me quote from a Russian article, the RIA Novosti Report of April 14, 2010, on the Graney class nuclear submarines: Graney class nuclear submarines are designed to launch a variety of long-range cruise missiles up to 3,100 miles or 500 kilometers with nuclear warheads and effectively engage submarines, surface warships, and land-based targets. Obviously, at 5,000 kilometers, as I said, that is a range longer than some of the ballistic missiles that are covered by the New START treaty. So these weapons--it is a little hard to characterize them as either tactical or strategic. I think it depends upon how they are used. But the point is, if my colleague believes they can't threaten anything, then what is the problem with trying to set a limit on them? Well, obviously--or at least I assume obviously--the Russians don't want to do that. I assume we raised this, though we don't have the negotiation record, so I don't know whether it was raised. If it wasn't, why wasn't it? And if it was because we didn't think there was any threat to the United States, then I think it would be very important to ask some of our military folks why they think that is the case given the kinds of targets that could be held at risk here and given the fact that we apparently reached a different conclusion during the START I treaty implementation phase when the side agreement was negotiated with the then-Soviet Union. So I don't think it would delay anything. We do posit it as a side agreement rather than an amendment. We just say that the administration should negotiate so that there wouldn't be a significant number of SLCM deployments by the Russians given the fact that we are not doing any. I do have to say that I fundamentally disagree with the assertion of my colleague that this kind of weapon can't upset the strategic balance. If you have a weapon that can fly over 3,000 miles with a nuclear warhead, which could be just as big of a nuclear warhead as on a bomber or an intercontinental ballistic missile, with all of the targets on our eastern seaboard or western seaboard that would be held at risk for such a weapon--in fact, 3,000 miles--you won't have to be far off either of our two U.S. coasts to hit most targets within the continental United States. This is a weapon that it seems to me we should be concerned about. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to support calling for a side agreement that would deal with the SLCMs just as we did under the START I treaty. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I will respond with about 30 seconds. Then I will be prepared to go to my next amendment. Perhaps I can reserve whatever time I have left on there to make a closing argument. I really do sincerely appreciate the characterization of these issues we have raised as serious and important. I do appreciate that. I do think, though, that it would be appropriate to have a better response than just that this will upset the Russians, they won't want to do it, so we will have to renegotiate the treaty, and that it will delay things and that will create problems. The purpose is not to delay, as I said. I don't think the START I treaty was delayed when we reached a side agreement. I think, in any event, the question is this: Should the United States delay, if that is what is called for, in order to improve the treaty in important respects? If it is conceded that this is an important aspect, then it seems to me that it is worth taking time to do it right. Most of the arguments that have been made in response to the amendments we have raised boil down to: The Russians won't want to do what you say, and therefore we need to reject your amendment because it would require some renegotiation. I get back to the point I have made over and over: Then what is the Senate doing here? Why would the Founders have suggested we should have a role in relation to treaties if every time we try to change something, the argument is that you cannot change a comma because the other side wouldn't like that and that would require renegotiation? There is nothing that serious about this treaty that it has to go into effect tomorrow. The Washington Post had an editorial, and they said that no great calamity will befall the United States if this treaty is not concluded before the end of the year. I think that is almost a direct quotation. There is no immediate national security reason to do so. I know the administration would like to get on with it, but no great harm will befall us if we take time to do it right. If we are not willing to do that, the Senate might as well rubberstamp what the President sends up because the argument will be that if we try to suggest changes, the other side will reject them and we could not possibly abide that. I will reserve the remainder of time on this amendment. Amendment No. 4893 Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4893, which I believe is at the desk, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. KYL. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. KYL. Let me finish my sentence on this. In any event, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If we put a limitation on the United States on something they are not developing, then it is only fair to put a limitation on them with regard to something we are not developing.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would have preferred to deal with each of the subjects in this amendment individually because each one is very important. To accommodate the other side's desire to try to get as much done as quickly as possible, we consolidated some amendments, and there is a lot in this. I regret that we don't have time to get into detail about each one of them. This amendment amounts to an effort to try to improve the verification of the treaty to deal with a variety of issues which have been raised in the past and which we believe are inadequately dealt with by the treaty. One of them involves covers, the kinds of things the then-Soviet Union and now Russians consistently put over the warheads so that it is impossible for our inspectors to see what is under them, to see how many warheads are under them. That has been a problem in the past. On telemetry, we say the President should certify to the Senate that he has reached a legally binding agreement with the Russian Federation so that each party is obliged to provide full and unimpeded access to its telemetry from all flight tests of strategic missiles limited by the treaty. That is important because while we are not developing a new generation of missiles, the Russians are. We will be denied the telemetry of those missile tests if the Russians decide to deny it. Our intelligence community has told us that this is of great value to us in assessing the capabilities of Russian missiles. Under the treaty, they don't have to provide anything. They could provide telemetry on old missiles they are testing, and they don't have to provide any on any of the new missiles they are testing. We believe that should be done. The same thing with respect to any ballistic missiles deployed during the duration of the treaty. Then we turn to the subject of inspections. There are different kinds of inspections, but we are talking here about type one inspections in which we say that the United States would consider it a violation of the deployed warhead limit and a material breach of the treaty if the Russians do one of two things: No. 1, any type one inspection that revealed that the Russian Federation had deployed a number of warheads on any one missile in excess of the number they declared for that missile; No. 2, any action by the Russian Federation that impedes the ability of the United States to determine the number of warheads deployed on any one missile prior to or during a type one inspection. That gets to the issue of covers again. Why is this important? Because we are supposedly counting weapons in this treaty, warheads. There is a limit of 1,550 warheads. How can we possibly verify compliance if, when we seek to count the number of warheads on top of missiles we have designated and have a right to inspect, we can't count the warheads? You tell me how we are supposed to assume how many warheads there are on the top of that particular missile or why we should not deem it a material breach if they declared a certain number of warheads and it turns out there are more. I think these are commonsense changes that would strengthen the verification provisions of the treaty. It is too bad Senator Bond is not here tonight. He is the ranking Republican member of the Intelligence Committee. In the classified session we had yesterday, he talked about the deficiencies in verification under this treaty. This subject doesn't permit us to get into a lot of detail in open session. We have heard a lot about past cheating by the Russians and the kinds of things that were done. What we are trying to do with these basic components is to make it less likely that the Russians would cheat, and if they do, it would less likely have an impact on the key element of the treaty, which is the limitation on warheads of 1,550. I will note a couple of things here that put this into context. There have been allegations that there is better verification than ever before under this treaty. That is just not true. The verification provisions of this treaty are not as strong as under the START I treaty. There is an argument that they don't need to be for various reasons or the Russians weren't willing to allow them to be for various reasons. I don't think you can say the verification is better. Former Secretary of State James Baker, who testified, said: The verification mechanism in the New START Treaty does not appear as rigorous or extensive as the one that verified the numerous and diverse treaty obligations and prohibitions under START I. This complex part of the treaty is even more crucial when fewer deployed nuclear warheads are allowed than were allowed in the past. That is obvious. The more you get down to a smaller number, the more important cheating is, the more dramatic the effect can be, and the better verification you need. Senator McCain said this: The New START Treaty's permissive approach to verification will result in less transparency and create additional challenges for our ability to monitor Russia's current and future capabilities. Former CIA Director James Woolsey said: New START's verification provisions will provide little or no help in detecting illegal activity at locations the Russians fail to declare, are off-limits to U.S. inspectors, or are underground or otherwise hidden from our satellites. Senator Bond made a comment that I have quoted before, which is this: New START suffers from fundamental verification flaws that no amount of tinkering around the edges can fix. . . . The Select Committee on Intelligence has been looking at this issue closely over the past several months. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that the United States cannot reliably verify the treaty's 1,550 limit on deployed warheads. To conclude, the amendment would require the President to certify that he has reached an agreement with Russia on the nonuse of covers that interfere with type one inspections and accurate warhead counting during those inspections. It doesn't solve the problem of determining the total number of warheads Russia deploys, but it would reduce a method of deception Russia has used in the past. On telemetry, the amendment would require the President to certify that he has reached a legally binding agreement with Russia that each party is obliged to provide the other full and unimpeded access to its telemetry from all flight tests of strategic missiles, including on new ballistic missile systems deployed by the Russians. They are free now to encrypt those tests. That makes it much harder to get information we have found to be very valuable. Finally, with regard to the material breach, the amendment contains an understanding that the United States would consider a violation of the deployed warhead limits to be a material breach of the treaty. This would include any type one inspection that revealed the Russians had deployed a number of warheads on any one missile in excess of the number they declared for that missile or that they continued to use covers that deny us the ability to see exactly how many warheads they have on their missiles. Mr. President, I hope my colleagues would recognize that verification is a problem under the treaty. This is a modest way to try to deal with specific aspects of that verification. I hope my colleagues would be willing to support the amendment. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. KYL. Might we also add that the second two votes would be 10- minute votes?

Mr. KYL. Might I inquire how much time remains on this side?

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me take 3, 4, 5 of those minutes. I appreciate my colleagues' compliments about important issues being brought up, and I also appreciate their concern that amendments of this significance would cause heartburn for the Russians and might well require them to want to renegotiate aspects of the treaty. I am trying to address that through the mechanism of the side agreement rather than amendment to the treaty or some kind of other more restrictive method. I thought that would be the preferable way to do it. It is not my intention, as with the previous amendment, to delay things. I do not think it necessarily would. But I do appreciate that on a couple of these items the Russians would not likely want to renegotiate. I am not so sure that would be the case with regard to the covers, this question of the kind of shroud or cover you put over the missile bus, the top of the missile that has the warheads since the treaty does deal with it, as my colleagues have pointed out, but I do not think it does so in a conclusive way. The 2005 compliance report issued by the State Department to discuss compliance of the Russian Government with respect to the START I treaty had a couple of longstanding issues. The issue of shrouds was one that they characterized as of long standing. They had a very hard time getting that resolved with the Russians. In the end, there was a particular accommodation reached, but it took forever. And during that time, we did not have the kind of satisfaction we wanted. We asked how disputes would be dealt with, and we get the same basic answer. That would go to the Bilateral Consultative Commission, the group of Russian and U.S. negotiators who are supposed to work these things out. What I can see is a kind of repeat of what we had before. They like to cover these things up and that does not seem to me the way to enter into a treaty where we are supposed to be in agreement with our counterparts and yet we have unresolved issues we have to leave to another day to be resolved through a long and probably difficult negotiation process. Also, my colleague from Massachusetts--these were his words; he was not quoting anyone--thought we had enormous certainty about this. I suggest I do not think the intelligence community would use a phrase such as ``enormous certainty.'' We cannot get into here the degree of percentage they attach to being able to know certain things under this treaty. Suffice it to say that we are not absolutely sure we can do what needs to be done here, and I do not think characterizing it as ``enormous certainty'' would be an accurate way to do it. Let me mention with regard to telemetry--first of all, let me correct one thing that is a little bit of misdirection and then agree with my colleagues on something else. There is a suggestion that we can get telemetry on five missiles, and that is true if the Russians agree. In other words, they have to volunteer to do it. The five missiles they tell us about can be old missiles. They do not have to be new missiles. It is a fact there is nothing in this treaty that requires the Russians or the United States to exchange telemetry on new missile tests; that is to say, tests of missiles currently being developed. There are at least two the Russians are developing right now. That leads to the second point. I think it is probably true the reason they did not want to agree to this is it would require them to give us very valuable information. Right now, they would not be getting any information from the United States because we are not testing missiles. But I ask, is that an asymmetry that is justified or that justifies a provision that says if you are not modernizing your forces and we are modernizing our forces, it is not fair to have us tell you what our missiles are like? Under the previous treaty, both sides had to do that, and it gave both sides more confidence. The Russians are developing new missiles. Should we not have some understanding of the capability of those missiles? We are not developing any. It is almost as if the United States would have to be modernizing its forces too in order to be able to justify a provision that said we had to exchange telemetry. Maybe the United States ought to get on with the modernization of our missile force so we can then go back to the Russians and say: You are modernizing, we are modernizing, now how about the exchange. To me that is not an argument to require the Russians not to provide us information. And in fact, when the shoe is on the other foot, that argument falls by the wayside, and we end up putting limitations in the treaty. Here is an example. The Russians are not developing and do not seem to have any intention of developing something called conventional Prompt Global Strike, which is a fancy way of saying: Put a conventional warhead on top of an ICBM so you do not have to send a nuclear warhead halfway around the world to destroy a target. We can see in today's conflict that we are not going to be engaging in a multiple nuclear exchange with another country but might well have a need based upon intelligence that does not have a very long shelf life that we want to send a conventional warhead to a specific target and that is something we would like to develop but the Russians are not interested in doing that. So did we say to the Russians: So because you are not doing it and we are, therefore, we are not going to have any limitation on this? No. We agreed, in fact, to a very important limitation. Any missiles we use in that regard have to be counted as if there were a nuclear warhead on top of it. So there is a 700-vehicle limit. That is all the number of missiles we can have. And yet any missiles that we put a conventional warhead on that have this ICBM range have to be counted against that limit. Well, the Russians aren't doing it, so why did we have to agree to something they are not doing? That is asymmetrical. That is not parity. So it is okay for the Russians to say: Hey, if we are doing something you are not doing, we are not going to be bound by anything in the treaty on it. But by the way, if you are doing something we are not doing, we are going to hold you accountable and bind you with a very important limitation in the treaty. You see, the argument doesn't hold water. Russia and the United States are not acting exactly the same with regard to our weapons. So to argue that anything we are doing differently from the other shouldn't count in the treaty is suspicious. And, in any event, it turns out we don't make that argument.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly to that now, in direct response to my colleague from Michigan.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me quote from the START I treaty, Text of Resolution of Advice and Consent to Ratification as Approved by the Senate: The Senate's advice and consent to the ratification of the START Treaty is subject to the following conditions, which shall be binding upon the President: Legal and Political Obligations of U.S.S.R.: That the legal and political obligations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reflected in the four related separate agreements, seven legally binding letters, four areas of correspondence, two politically binding declarations, thirteen joint statements . . . And so on. The two politically binding declarations are precisely the reference to the limitation of the SLCM numbers for both countries. I mean there is a dispute about whether it is legally binding in the same sense that the treaty itself is, but the heading of this is Legal and Political Obligations of the U.S.S.R., and it goes on to talk about . . . The United States shall regard actions inconsistent with these legal obligations as equivalent under international law to actions inconsistent with the START Treaty. And so on and so on. We believe these were binding and should be. It is no argument, however, to say that if somebody else didn't see it that way, therefore, what we are asking for here is not a binding agreement. Whether you call it binding legally or binding politically, in any event, I wish to see it done, because there is no limitation on the SLCMs the Russians are planning to develop, and the submarine that is under development to carry them, and they could have a strategic value as well as a tactical value. They were a subject of the previous START I agreement and I think they should be a subject of this agreement as well. Let me summarize. The first amendment our colleagues will be voting on is, I believe, the Wicker amendment, and then the second amendment is the amendment which would provide a side agreement for a limitation on the number of Russian SLCMs--the submarine launch cruise missiles-- and the third vote will be on the Kyl amendment relative to verification relating to covers on the ICBMs and telemetry on ICBM tests.

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Madam President, I wish to talk about both the Thune amendment and the Inhofe amendment. With respect to the Inhofe amendment on verification, we are going to go into executive session of the Senate at 2 o'clock this afternoon, where there will be an opportunity for all Senators to examine classified materials that have been presented by our intelligence agencies, some of which relate specifically to the treaty and, in particular, the verification provisions in the treaty. It is too bad it is not possible for us to discuss with very much specificity the nature of the intelligence we will be discussing, but I will say I think it is a good thing we will be voting on the Inhofe amendment following that session, because a lot of the material we are going to be exposed to in executive session relates to the verification provisions of this treaty and past experience with verification. That is about all I wish to say right now, except that I hope colleagues would attend that session because their vote on the Inhofe amendment would at least be partially predicated on their being briefed in that executive session. With respect to the Thune amendment, I very much support it as well. The reason is because the whole point of this treaty was to reduce the nuclear warheads and the delivery vehicles of the Russian Federation and the United States. That is the essence of the treaty. There is a lot more to it, but it reduces to 1,550 the actual warheads and reduces to 700 the delivery vehicles. There is a special definition or counting rule of those delivery vehicles that we don't need to get into here, but the reality is, it is 700 deployed delivery vehicles, with another 100 that could theoretically be deployed at a later date. But 700 is the number. That is important for a couple of reasons. As we have talked about before, the Russians will actually have room to build up. There are a lot of different estimates over the number of delivery vehicles they are planning on having. But because missiles and bombers and submarines are expensive, the Russians could be well below that number in a few years. So that number does not help the United States at all. The Russians are already below it by at least--well, over 100--and they will be going lower than that. One unfortunate consequence of that is they are MIRVing their ICBM delivery vehicles in a way that, obviously, is going to be much more destabilizing. Throughout the Cold War, both sides developed missiles that allowed them to put more than one warhead on top of a missile. The problem is, that is very destabilizing in a potential nuclear conflict because of the notion that you lose it if you do not use it. So it was an incentive for either side to launch their missiles before the other side could attack them and destroy them. If you hit one missile silo and that missile in the silo has 8 warheads on it or 10 warheads on it, you have killed 10 warheads, not just one. Those warheads--the way they work is, when the missile gets up to the top of its apogee, those warheads are splayed out, and each one has a different trajectory down to potentially 8 or 10 different targets. So they are very destabilizing. The incentive is for the person doing the first strike to kill them all so the other side does not have that capability coming back at you. Well, both the United States and the then-Soviet Union recognized how destabilizing this was and moved toward a single warhead per missile, which is much less destabilizing, obviously. Since one of the benefits of this treaty is allegedly the stability that comes from it, one is very troubled by the idea that, unfortunately, that is not the way it works. The treaty is much more destabilizing, not stabilizing, because of this incentive for the Russians to put more than one warhead on each missile. The United States, by contrast, is limiting our missiles to one warhead apiece. In a way, that puts us at a big disadvantage. Another way it puts us at a disadvantage is we are above the 700, and we are going to have to retire a lot of our delivery vehicles to get down to 700. So the treaty is not symmetrical in this regard. They could actually build up to 700. We will have to bring down to 700. It is also not symmetrical because our obligations around the world are much more diverse than are Russia's obligations. Russia will be defending Russia. The United States has an understanding with 31 other countries that our nuclear umbrella is available to them for their nuclear deterrence as well. So this requires a more sophisticated defense plan on our part as to how we would deliver various warheads to what targets, and it essentially expands the number of weapons we need. So it is a big deal to get down to the number of 700. As Senator Thune has noted--and I will not repeat this--before the treaty was negotiated, a lot of our miliary people were testifying to various numbers that, obviously, led to the conclusion that 700 was way too low. Dr. Schlesinger has, for example, said that 700 might be barely enough. The problem is, that, A, we are even going to go below 700 if we proceed with something the administration wants to do, many of us here want to do; that is, to develop what is called a conventional Prompt Global Strike. A conventional Prompt Global Strike is using an ICBM but with a conventional warhead on it, not a nuclear warhead, to strike at a target of potentially a rogue nation or some terrorist group or someplace where you have actionable intelligence that is of very short life. You want to destroy a target. You obviously do not want to use a nuclear warhead. But you want to get there fast, and it is a long way away. So you might need to use, essentially, the same kind of missile you would use to deliver a nuclear warhead. Well, the Russians did not like that, so they said: If you do any of those, you are going to have to count them against your nuclear delivery limit. So if we did 25 of those, let's say, then instead of 700 vehicles to deliver nuclear weapons, we would only have 675. That is why the Thune amendment talks about going back up to 730, which, without getting into classified material, I believe represents a number that more closely approximates what people think is going to be necessary for the United States on into the future. The other thing that is troubling about it is, the administration has yet to commit to a full triad nuclear capable. Even though they have said they are fully committed to the triad, which means bombers, submarines, and ICBMs, they have not been willing to say the new bombers we build will be nuclear capable or will have cruise missiles that can deliver a nuclear warhead. So while they say ``triad,'' they are not willing to commit to anything but a diad. The problem with that is, there is much less stability and capability if you only have two ways of delivering your nuclear weapons. If there is something wrong with your ICBM force-- remember, about 2 months ago, the power went out in several States, and our ICBMs were actually down for--I have forgotten what it was--an hour and a half or something like that because they did not have any electrical power. Well, obviously, nothing happened during that period of time. But a single point of failure is never desirable in the military context, where if one thing goes wrong, a lot of weapons or capability is taken off the table. The problem is, if you get down to just two ways of delivering these weapons, rather than the three we have today, you are going to be much less capable. Your deterrent is not going to deter as much. That is what Senator Thune is trying to get at. Let's at least modestly increase the number of delivery vehicles we have. It is a modest amendment. It is an appropriate amendment. Yet as we have just seen from Reuters today--something we already knew but the latest iteration of it--``Russia warns U.S. not to change nuclear pact.'' In effect, what they are saying is, the Senate can debate all it wants to, but if it makes one change, changes one comma, one thing is different in the treaty, well, then what? Then, as my colleague, Senator Kerry, said, we would have to see if the Russians were willing to agree to it. Otherwise, they would have to renegotiate at least that part of the treaty. Well, what is wrong with that? Unless you think the U.S. Constitution was stupid to give the Senate a role in this, it does not seem to me there is anything wrong with the Senate saying: You got about nine- tenths of it just fine, President Obama and President Medvedev, your negotiators. These negotiators are good, smart people and they are dedicated public servants, but they are not necessarily the last word. The Senate is the last word, according to our Constitution. We gave our advice. The administration did not take our advice in two specific ways, but yet they expect us to give them their consent to the treaty. The reality is, the Senate should not be a rubberstamp. In the first START treaty, we said: You have not dealt with a subject here that needs to be dealt with--the potential for Russian submarine-launched cruise nuclear weapons. We need to have a side agreement on that. It did not blow up START. We did a side agreement. The world did not end when the Senate said no to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The predictions were that this was going to destroy our relations with Russia forever. It did not. Here we are today now told again: If you change one thing in this treaty, then Russia will not go along with it and our relationship could deteriorate significantly. Well, if our relationship depends upon ratification of the treaty exactly like it is, then it is a lot weaker than the President and Vice President are making it out to be when they talk about this wonderful new reset relationship. Surely, it could stand the Senate making a modest change to the treaty. If it cannot, then I do not buy the argument that this is a wonderful reset relationship. So for my colleagues who say: We will not abide by any amendments to the treaty, I say: Well, then, you have just said the Senate is irrelevant in the treaty process. We might as well forget about having the Senate consider these treaties in the first place. Senator Thune and Senator Inhofe have good amendments. I am looking forward to supporting both of them when we return from our closed session this afternoon. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. KYL. I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. KYL. I will conclude by saying, I hope we have at least a short moment or period of debate following the closed session so both Senator Thune and Senator Inhofe can make a brief closing argument to remind our colleagues about what the debate has been all about. I regret more of our colleagues were not on the floor to hear the debate.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. No. I am saying one is mine, and I would eliminate it now.

Mr. KYL. If that was the impression, I do not think I can do that. But in any event, I did not try to do that. There are four all told. I would eliminate my one, and there would be a fixed number--only three possibilities after that.

Mr. KYL. It would be the only Kyl amendment remaining pending to the treaty.

Mr. KYL. I can tell my colleague that the amendment I would be agreeing not to bring up is amendment No. 4854. I misspoke when I said it is pending. It is filed to the treaty.

Mr. KYL. I am not willing to withdraw my request. What I am afraid of, quite frankly, is that we are not going to be able to get unanimous consent before a cloture vote on the treaty and we are going to be iced out here. I have propounded a unanimous consent request. I will be happy to read it again. If there is an objection, fine. I want to get agreement on this, if at all possible.

Mr. KYL. I would be happy to. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to call up five amendments to the resolution of ratification; provided further that these be the only amendments in order to the resolution of ratification at this time; and I ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the amendments solicited, the Senate then resume consideration of the treaty.

Mr. KYL. Madam President, I appreciate the explanation. That ordinarily would be information given to the two leaders, and we did not do that in this case. I do appreciate this.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Reserving the right to object, I apologize. Did Senator Corker ask a unanimous consent request?

Mr. KYL. But to return to the treaty upon its disposition; is that correct?