EAST-WEST DEADLOCK ON DISARMAMENT

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 11

EAST-WEST DEADLOCK ON DISARMAMENT

Change In Attitude Of

Soviet Welcomed

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, December 20. The United States today proposed that a subcommittee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission should renew its efforts next March to end the East-West deadlock on arms limitation. Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States permanent representative, said in the commission that the sub-committee—-made up of the Big Four Powers and Canada—should convene after the General Assembly adjourns.

Mr Lodge welcomed what he described as evidence of a Soviet movement towards positions which gave greater hope of reaching agreement.

Mr Arkady Sobolev, the Soviet representative, told the commission today that disarmament was the “most fundamental and the most urgent of the questions before the United Nations, whose solution is of decisive importance for the consolidation of peace.”

In London today, the ."Daily Express’’ said that Britain is shortly to suggest a world wide limitation of H-bomb tests.

The newspaper said the Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden) at the end of an exchange in the House of Commons on a question of limiting the tests, said: “We intend to bring forward proposals within a few weeks.”

It said this would not however, affect British tests to take place off Christmas Island in the Pacific next April. Talks are already going on between Britain. France, the United States and Canada on the general disarmament plan circulated by President Eisenhower to the Allied Governments and to Moscow last week. Details have not been published, but it is understood to include prpvisions for limiting H-weapon tests. The British proposals are likely to be embodied in a comprehensive Allied plan, based on the “Eisenhower line,” the paper said.