Remarks on Signing a Joint Resolution Approving the Interim Agreement With the Soviet Union on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms

Gentlemen:

We are gathered here, as you know, for the signing of the executive agreement, and I would like to repeat something that I said in the White House to this group of leaders when I returned from the trip to Moscow.

I pointed out both in my statement to the Congress and also to the Members of the Congress, both House and Senate, who had to consider these agreements, that we considered this a cooperative venture and we wanted the Congress to examine the agreements and to reach a conclusion, independently of the Executive, that they were in the interest of the United States.

The Congress has now so acted. Its debate has, in both the Senate and the House, served to inform the American people of the contents of the agreement, and also what its implications are.

I think what is particularly pleasing--pleasing in the sense of how our system works---is that this agreement has had bipartisan support in the fullest sense. Democrats and Republicans have joined together in debating it and criticizing where they felt there was room to criticize, and finally in voting for it in the form that it has now reached the desk here, and as I will sign it.

We have asked you to come to this room because we do feel this agreement is one that has a very special significance. All of you who have been here many times before know that it was the Cabinet Room from the period of Abraham Lincoln up until 1902, when the West Wing was completed. But it is now known as the Treaty Room because the war between Spain and the United States, as you know, was ended by a treaty signed in this room.

I would simply say in that connection, this is not a treaty which ends a war. This is not an agreement which guarantees that there will be no war. But what this is is the beginning of a process that is enormously important that will limit now, and, we hope, later reduce the burden of arms, and thereby reduce the danger of war. We think, therefore, it deserves this kind of attendance by the leaders of the Congress, the Administration, the Armed Forces, and it deserves also being signed in this room.