WASHINGTON (Reuters) - German President Johannes Rau on Thursday said opponents of arms control in the U.S. Senate were putting the world at risk for the sake of party politics.

In a rare comment on internal affairs by a visiting foreign head of state, Rau told a dinner he shared the concern of the Clinton administration and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the future of arms control negotiations.

He said: ``I am extremely worried by the attitude of those in the Senate who oppose arms control on principle.

``What is at stake is the fate of the entire world, the joint responsibility of the nuclear powers -- not the supposed interests of a country, a party or a group within a party.''

Rau, addressing the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee, did not go into details but he was apparently referring to the mainly Republican opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the Senate.

The Senate rejected the treaty last October on a vote of 48 to 51 after a debate which the administration said was too brief and too partisan. It needed 67 votes to be ratified.

Complacency And Provincialism

It was the most important treaty rejected by the Senate since the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, and the vote was a major blow to Clinton's international prestige.

The failure to ratify has also damaged the credibility of the Clinton administration as it tries to prevent nuclear proliferation to new countries and to negotiate with Russia on new arms control agreements.

Rau said: ``Arms control and disarmament must not be allowed to come to a halt. On the contrary, we need to make additional efforts so that one day there will be no more weapons of mass destruction in this world. That must be our goal.''

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, another speaker at the dinner, criticized what she called ``a new spirit of complacency and provincialism'' in the United States since the end of the Cold War reduced the chances of a nuclear war.

``These new provincialists ask why we should still care about what happens abroad, especially in places many of us have never been, don't intend to go, couldn't find on a map and can't even spell,'' she said.

Albright has previously ridiculed conservative Republicans who say they do not have passports because they do not intend or wish to travel abroad.

``Such thinking is seductive... But we have been down this road before, when too many people in too many countries cared too late about events in hard-to-find and spell places, such as Ethiopia and my own native Czechoslovakia, Auschwitz and Dachau,'' she added.

She enumerated instances of concerted international action against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, human rights abuses in Chechnya and far-right influence in the Austrian government.

``Governments from around the world are right in telling officials in Iran that what happens in the trial of the 13 Jews will have repercussions everywhere, and that if you want to earn international respect, the way to begin is by respecting the dignity of your own citizens,'' she added.

The Jews went on trial in the city of Shiraz this week on charges of spying of Israel. Israeli ambassador David Ivry told the dinner the Jews were innocent and Jews elsewhere ``must use all means to ensure they return to their families''.

On Middle East peace talks, Albright said the months to come would be filled with ``promise and peril''.

``The logic of peace has never been so compelling, or the opportunity for peace so clear. Yet the parties are under great pressure, and the prospect for new breakthroughs is uncertain,'' she added.