Drive For Start In Disarmament

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28321, 5 July 1957, Page 15

Drive For Start In Disarmament

[By THOMAS J. MARSHALL)

WASHINGTON, June

Disarmament is admittedly as difficult a topic of international relations as can be imagined. This week even Washingtonians used to seeking their way through its labyrinth were somewhat overwhelmed by its complexities. But this is not the only reason why there is a need for clarifying disarmament prospects as they now look from Washington. Another reason' is that there has been set in motion as energetic and purposeful a drive for a modest, limited start with disarmament as any launched by an American administration in recent years.

There are then a few essentials that must be understood about this effort • before its possible success can be assessed. One is that—however limited its first purpose—this is a highly realistic effort. A considerable portion of the administration’s top echelon in charge of diplomatic, military and nuclear affairs—and Senators as well—were drawn into the consultations with Mr Harold Stassen, the President’s special adviser on disarmament who has now returned to Europe for further negotiations. Response by Soviet

What caused this new assessment was not a sudden heads-in-the-clouds optimism. It was specifically a Soviet response to an American suggestion in the London talks.

That response is reliably understood to have included Soviet readiness to negotiate a limited, so-called first-step agreerpent and an indication that Soviet territory might be opened to aerial inspection under Mr Eisenhower’s “Open Skies” plan, something Moscow had flatly and repeatedly refused in the past. The Soviets failed to insist on a ban on nuclear weapons without enforceable or inspectable commitment (and thus, realistically speaking, without value) or on the liquidation of foreign bases. Nobody here, of course, is blind to the possibility that all this might be just another Soviet propaganda move. But given the known internal problems of the Soviets, there is a chance that they fully mean what they said in London —an opportunity no responsible American government would wish or could afford to overlook.

Nor is anybody here oblivious to the difficulties that siill lie ahead. But the concensus here evidently is that the major problem is to keep the momentum of the talks going, to aim at a sort of “small slice” arms cut, to make a beginning with an inspection system and with some protection against nuclear surprise Mr Stassen therefore received highly flexible orders: to keep the talks going and “get something

started somewhere rapidly ” as Secretary of State Dulles put it this week.

“First Step” Agreement Under these premises, a “first step’ limited agreement naturally must as yet take shape. But it certainly could include manpower, military expenditures and major arms, including the carriers of nuclear weapons. It would have to include inspection, ground as well as air.

On this latter point, considerable confusion has arisen. A great many different inspection areas have been proposed and speculated on. But the fact is that Washington has long considered it more difficult to arrange such inspection over politically complicated areas such as Europe than for example in the Arctic —across which surprise attacks could be launched.

The big point, in fact, is that the United States is giving top priority to getting an inspection system going quickly and wherever it can be started to serve as a vital initial disarmament move. Inspection, not its exact geography, is the crux of the matter.

For the most’ important goal now is to reverse the trend of 11. years and to make a beginning at staying the arms rqpe. Time, so the thinking here goes, might then change the outlook for the participation of many nations in the limited first step, for four-power talks, for political settlement, and indeed for a later comprehensive disarmament arrangement. U.S. Information Service.