Kenneth Fletcher
NS&D Monitor
1/17/2014
Concerns by two Republican lawmakers regarding future nuclear weapons reductions led the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week to hold off on voting on the nominations of Rose Gottemoeller to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and Frank Rose to be Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance. While 37 nominations cleared the committee at a business meeting this week, including Adam Scheinman to be Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) requested to put off votes on Gottemoeller, Rose and the nomination of Puneet Talwar to be Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs.
Rubio and Risch are concerned because of a lack of a commitment from the Administration to only undertake further nuclear weapons reductions through the treaty process. “It is imperative that any further cuts to the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal be completed only through a treaty subject to the advice and consent of the Senate,” states a letter sent to the State Department in August signed by the two lawmakers and 17 other Senators.
But Senate Foreign Relations plans to hold a vote on the nominees at its next business meeting, Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said this week. “I think some of the concerns that the members have, and I respect that, is necessarily beyond their pay grade,” Menendez said. “We cannot begin to move forward in some of these critical areas of arms control and national security and verification and compliance without having people in those positions. So I intend to put their names on the next business meeting and hopefully we will have a vote at that time to move them forward. But we will observe the request of our colleagues.”
