MARSHALL ISLAND H-BOMB TESTS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27401, 14 July 1954, Page 11

MARSHALL ISLAND H-BOMB TESTS

Soviet Move For Ban Fails At U.N. (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, July 12. The Soviet Union failed today in an effort to have the United Nations call a halt to future United States atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands. Later, the New Zealand delegate to the United Nations (Mr L. K. Munro) said his Government accepted the assurance of the United States that nothing would be left undone to safeguard the present and future wellbeing of the population of the Marshall Islands. The issue came to a vote in the six-nation Petitions Committee of the United Nations Trusteeship Council. The Soviet proposal calling on the United States to desist from such tests received no support. The question was brought before the United Nations by a group of Marshall Island residents who complained of damage done by the recent hydrogen bomb tests and asked for greater care in event of future blasts. References to issue were made later in the day in the Trusteeship Council’s general debate on the Marshall Islands. Mr Munro urged that the matter be kept within proper perspective. "The test which gave rise to the petition from the Marshall Islanders was not the first test held in the territory,” he said. "Others had preceded it without questions being raised in this council or in other organs of the United Nations.” Mr Munro said the two islands which were the site of the tests, one of them largely man-made, had never been inhabited and,were little more than sand spits. The United States authorities had acted promptly and effectively to combat the effects of the "fall out” of radioactive dust and all Marshall ! Islanders who were exposed had rej covered.