REDUCTION OF FORCES

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28314, 27 June 1957, Page 13

REDUCTION OF FORCES

Further Offer By America (N.Z. Prtss Association—Copyright) LONDON. June 25. The United States today proposed that the Soviet Union and America should reduce the level ot their armed forces to 2.500.000 each in the first stage of a disarmament agreement, and then to 2,100,000 and 1,700,000 each in two further stages. The second and third stages of this proposal—made by Mr Harold L Stassen, chief United States representative at the Five-Power United Nations Disarmament Conference —were conditional on progress being made in the solution of outstanding political problems. Last Thursday Mr Stasaen. in the first of what he called a aeries of important statements, proposed the immediate reduction of the forces of the United States and the Soviet Union to 2,500,000 men each without .political conditions. With his additional proposals today, therefore, Mr Stassen went a step further in unfolding the new United States partial disarmament plpn., A British source said today that Mr Valerian Zorin, Russia's representative on the sub-committee, had reserved his position, stating that he wished to know what Mr Stassen had in mind when he spoke of the solution of political problems as a condition for the second and third stages of a disarmament agreement. The source said that the French delegate, Mr Jules Moch, and Mr Selwyn Lloyd (the British Foreign Secretary) proposed identical reductions of force levels for France and Britain to ceilings ot 750,000 men in the first stage, 700,000 men in the aecond, and 850,000 in the third stage of a disarmament agreement