By all means the U.S. Senate should put aside the proposed treaty to end the testing of nuclear weapons. If a delay can't be engineered, and the possibility of doing so seemed to diminish yesterday, the danger exists that the fate of the treaty will be decided before most Americans realize it was at issue. This is not to call for a permanent delay.
Ratification has no deadline.
If the treaty can't be considered on its merits now, perhaps it can be later. For now, however, statesmanship is lacking. Even the fact that the treaty is before the Senate now has nothing to do with anyone's desire for a comprehensive airing of the issues. It's there because GOP leaders, who had bottled it up in committee for more than two years, called it up on short notice. They thought they finally had the votes to kill it, dealing President Clinton a political setback.