ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28020, 14 July 1956, Page 9

ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA

Further Attack On U.S. Policy NEW YORK. July 12. Mr Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Deputy-Foreign Minister, today announced Soviet readiness to accept two basic provisions of the Western disarmament proposals —man-power levels and disarmament “in parts.** But at the same time he delivered a blistering attack on American foreign policy. Mr Gromyko’s speech in the United Nations Disarmament Commission brought an immediate reply from Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States Ambassador, who declared the speech was a “scurrilous attack on my country in the very worst traditions of Stalinism.” _ _ Iran. Britain. France. China. Canada and Australia also all swiftly leapt to the defence of their international policies and security pacts in the face of Mr Gromyko’s wide-ranging criticism. „ Mr Gromyko said that the Soviet Union agreed that the level of armed forces for the United States, the Soviet Union and China be established at 2.500.000. for Britain and France 750.000 and no more than 150.000 to 200.000 for other countries. This, he said, should lead to a second step—a reduction of 1.000.000 to 1.500.000 for the United States, the Soviet Union and China and 450.000 for Britain and France. By far the greater part of his long speech was devoted to bitter criticism of the West and military pacts. In particular, he blamed the United States and “monopolistic circles” for the failure to solve outstanding international problems. Mr Lodge, speaking immediately after the Soviet delegate, said: "This is a sad morning. When we should be working constructively on the disarmament question, we have just heard a scurrilous attack on us in the worst traditions of Stalinism. “If we cannot talk and act here as honest men, then we indeed are in a bad situation,” said Mr Lodge. It was a figment of the imagination to believe that the American economy was dependent on armament orders. When industry converted to peaceful uses afer the Korean war it brought greater .prosperity than ever before. U.S. Air Force Mr Gromyko had charged that the United States Air Force was one of the great purchasing agencies of the world, exceeding the combined expenditures of five of the largest American industrial concerns, and he implied that a cut-back in air strength would disturb the United States economy. “The idea that we can maintain prosperity in America only by having a war is crude and childish,” said Mr Lodge.

“Mr Gromyko is in no position to pass judgment on others when the people of the satellite countries are held in a grip of iron from which they are trying to escape, as events in the past few weeks have shown.” he said. Mr Lodge said the parts of the Soviet speech which did not attack the United States would be carefully studied.

The Soviet delegate reverted to the old demand for immediate prohibition of the atomic bomb, refused to accept President Eisenhower’s plan for aerial inspection of armed facilities to guard against surprise attack, and stood by the Soviet Union’s proposals for the control of disarmament by ground inspection only.