But Administration officials have made it clear that unless the Russians are willing to give that permission, they have no intention of actually deploying a nationwide missile-defense system. Why? Because the Administration believes that any such deployment would violate the ABM Treaty. And, as National Security Adviser Samuel Berger affirmed in a speech just last week, "We remain strongly committed to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty [as] a cornerstone of our security."

What that means is that in Mr. Berger's view, deploying even the most limited missile defense would require getting permission from Russia to revise the ABM Treaty. Consider that for a moment: The Clinton Administration wants to negotiate permission from Russia over whether the U.S. can protect itself from ballistic missile attack by North Korea.

The ABM Treaty is the root of our problems. So long as it is a "cornerstone" of U.S. security policy, as Mr. Berger says, we will never be able to deploy a nationwide missile defense that will provide real security for the American people.

We do not need to renegotiate the ABM Treaty to build and deploy national missile defense. We can do it today. The ABM Treaty is dead. It died when our treaty partner, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. But rather than move swiftly to declare the treaty dead, and to build and deploy a national missile defense, the Clinton Administration is attempting to resuscitate the ABM Treaty with new protocols to apply its terms to Russia and all the other nuclear states that were once part of the Soviet Union.

The world has changed a great deal since the ABM Treaty was first ratified 27 years ago. The U.S. faces new and very different threats today-threats which are growing daily. China has nineteen intercontinental ballistic missiles, thirteen of which are aimed at the U.S. As recently as 1997 a senior Chinese official issued a veiled nuclear threat, warning that the U.S. would never come to the defense of Taiwan, because we Americans "care more about Los Angeles than we do Taipei."

Saddam Hussein is doggedly pursuing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them, and the will of the international community to confront and disarm him is crumbling. Iran, which is also developing a nuclear capability, just tested a new missile-built with Russian, Chinese, and North Korean technology-which can strike Israel and Turkey, a NATO ally. And, according to the Rumsfeld Commission, Iran "has acquired and is seeking advanced missile components that can be combined to produce ballistic missiles with sufficient range to strike the United States." If Iran succeeds, the commission warns, it will be capable of striking all the way to St. Paul, Minn.

North Korea's unstable Communist regime is forging ahead with its nuclear-weapons program, and test-fired a missile over Japan last August which is capable of striking both Alaska and Hawaii. And Pyongyang is close to testing a new missile, the TD-2, which could allow it to strike the continental U.S.

America is today vulnerable to ballistic missile attack by unstable outlaw regimes, and that missile threat will increase dramatically in the early years of the 21st century. What are we doing today, in this waning year of the 20th century, to defend ourselves against these emerging threats? Practically nothing.

When the Senate votes on the new protocols expanding the ABM Treaty to Russia and other post-Soviet states, we will in fact be voting on the ABM Treaty itself. For the first time in 27 years, the Senate will have a chance to re-examine the wisdom of that dangerous treaty. If I succeed, we will defeat the ABM Treaty, toss it into the dustbin of history, and thereby clear the way to build a national missile defense.

The Clinton Administration wants to avoid that at all costs. So the President has delayed sending the new protocols to the Senate for approval. But Mr. Clinton does not have a choice-he is required by law to submit the ABM protocols to the Senate. On May 14, 1997, Mr. Clinton agreed to explicit, legally binding language that he submit the protocols, a condition that I required during the ratification of another treaty, the Conventional Forces in Europe Flank Document. It has been 618 days since Mr. Clinton made that commitment under law. I am going to hold him to it.

Today I am setting a deadline for the President to submit the ABM protocols to the Senate. I expect them to arrive by June 1. In the meantime, I will begin ratification hearings on the treaty shortly, so that the Foreign Relations Committee will be ready to vote and report the treaty to the full Senate by June 1. I say to the President: Let your administration make its case for the ABM Treaty, we will make our case against it, and let the Senate vote. If I have my way, the Senate this year will clear the way for the deployment of national missile defense.

Not until the Administration has submitted the ABM protocols and the Kyoto global-warming treaty, and the Senate has completed its consideration of them, will the Foreign Relations Committee turn its attention to other treaties on the President's agenda.

Mr. Clinton cannot demand quick action on treaties he wants us to consider, and at the same time hold hostage other treaties he is afraid we will reject. The President must submit all of them, or we will consider none of them.

Sen. Helms (R., N.C.) is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.