The substitution of four states for one in this bilateral 1972 treaty would convert it to a multilateral treaty.

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The Protocol is a win-win outcome for the environment and economics: it is a multilateral environmental agreement that provides solutions to economics, and it is also an economic treaty that provides necessary protection for the environment.

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The treaty-signing demonstrates yet again that Britain increasingly looks to the EU and multilateral institutions as its closest partners, not the U.S., which Brown earlier in the year pointedly called Britain's most important bilateral relationship.

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We believe, moreover, that the Bush Administration's stances on such treaties reflect a clear-eyed assessment of the real limits of diplomacy with nations that do not honor their commitments, that deliberately conceal their activities so as to defeat verification and that seek to use bilateral and multilateral agreements as instruments of asymmetric warfare against nations like the United States that abide by their treaty obligations.

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In a multilateral setting, the emphasis would be on North Korea's violation of the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its threat to the region and the world.

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Finally, by transforming a bilateral agreement into a multilateral one, the Clinton Administration would effectively be giving three additional nations a veto over changes to the ABM Treaty .

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy