PROPOSAL BY INDIA

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27491, 27 October 1954, Page 11

PROPOSAL BY INDIA

Armament Truce Suggested (Rec. 9 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 25. India today proposed “an armament truce” pending agreement on a disarmament convention. Mr V. K. Krishna Menon, head of the Indian delegation, tabled a resolution to this effect in the Political Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. Mr Menon was due to explain his resolution before the committee after Mr Vyshinsky, the Soviet delegate, had spoken. But he announced .later that he would speak tomorrow. The committee has before it a reaction sponsored by the Western nations and the Soviet Union ? calling on the Disarmament Commission to reconvene the private talks which were begun last summer in London. The operative part of the Indian resolution asked the assembly to recommend that the commission take into consideration “other proposals’’ apart

from those with which the private talks would deal, namely the British and French memorandum, the United States working paper on controls, and the Soviet proposals of September 30. The Indian proposal also called for: The study of ways and means of establishing “an armament truce” pending agreement on a disarmament convention. Procedures for effective co-operation with and the ascertainment of the views of states which are not members of the Disarmament commission. Discussion and suggestions on disarmament in the General Assembly. The determination of the factors which should govern the equitable reductions and levels of armed forces and conventional armaments in respect both of their quantum and character.

The resolution would also ask the assembly to decide that, in view of the urgency and importance of the problem of disarmament, the present session should go into recess rather than be adjourned on the target date of December 10 “to be reconvened by the President as appropriate.”