SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY :

Little fine print, and lots of loopholes : The treaty that Bush and Putin are signing tomorrow pioneers the new approach of 'fast-track arms control.' (Peter Grier, May 23, 2002, The Christian Science Monitor)

Administration officials agree that the impending treaty, in its simplicity, will be legally binding for but a blink of time. But they claim that to focus on this is to miss the agreement's point.

It's not about numbers, they say. It's about codifying the tone of a new, friendlier US-Russian relationship. The new treaty isn't as complicated as past ones because it doesn't have to be.

"Instead of a negotiation which took multiple years and consumed multiple forests worth of paper, what we have is a negotiation that's ... produced a treaty which when fully prepared, will be about three pages long," said the senior official.

President Gore, Vice President Lieberman, and Secretary Holbrooke would just now be putting the finishing touches on their proposal for where to hold arms control talks and what shape the table should be. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2002 1:02 PM