Word: inf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the treaty reached the Senate floor last week, 90 lawmakers were ready to vote yes. A group of Democratic Senators, miffed at Reagan's reinterpretation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, has proposed an amendment that would prohibit any future President from reinterpreting the INF accord. But the largest obstacle to speedy approval remained the staunch opposition of a group of right-wing Senators led by North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms. One of Helms' more imaginative objections: that Party General Secretary Gorbachev, because he is not head of state (technically, President Andrei Gromyko is), had no right to sign...
...INF treaty requires the elimination within three years of all U.S. and Soviet missiles with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles...
...idea originated with TIME Special Projects Head David McGowan, who last summer proposed a partnership to Frontline managers, including Executive Producer David Fanning. Both sides agreed that NATO was an ideal topic for their first documentary. Says Frontline Senior Producer Mike Sullivan: "With the INF treaty and the promise of a later treaty on strategic weapons, it was clear that the requirements for the defense of Europe were going to change drastically." From TIME's point of view, says Assistant Managing Editor Richard Duncan, who oversees the magazine's role in the series, "it was a natural, a story...
...TIME has been told that the source for at least some of these stories was Sullivan himself. The Senate Republican aide, in other words, had leaked information for articles that he then cited when publishing the classified figures in an attack on the INF treaty...
Sullivan and his current patron, Helms, oppose the INF agreement because, they say, the Soviets may be hiding a secret arsenal of SS-20 missiles. The Reagan Administration contends that even if this is true, the missiles could never be tested and would quickly become unreliable. Articles comparing Soviet SS-20 figures with much higher, classified Defense Intelligence Agency estimates began showing up in conservative newspapers last winter. Citing these reports, several conservative Senators requested a special closed-door session to resolve the issue before bringing the treaty to the Senate floor for debate...