Khrushchev’s Replies To Melbourne Editor

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28619, 23 June 1958, Page 15

Khrushchev’s Replies To Melbourne Editor

(Niz. Press Assoctatton—Copvnghtl

(Rec. 8 p.jn.) MELBOURNE,, June 22. The Russian Prime Minister, Mr Khrushchev, said in a statement published yesterday, that the Soviet Union had exerted, and would continue to exert, every effort to bring about a summit conference. Russia stood for no single country intervening in the internal affairs of any other country, he said. Mr Khrushchev’s statements were contained in a letter he wrote in response to a series of questions posed by the editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times, Ltd., Melbourne, Mr J. C. Waters, who, recently visited Russia. The Melbourne evening paper, the “Herald,” has published the answers to half the questions in one-instalment, and will publish the rest tomorrow. In general, Mr Khrushchev’s answers follow the line of previous announcements on Russia’s relations with and attitude to the rest of the world. “Ripe for Settlement’’ A high-level conference was the best way of dealing with “queS* tions ripe for settlement,” he said. The beginning should be made with “what is realistically possible so as to solve the problem by stages.” He hinted at a flexible agenda to help solve international tension and said it would be possible to raise the question of destroying stockpiles of atomic weapons and setting up effective systems ot control and inspection—after the suspension of nuclear weapons tests. Russia was willing to discuss

the entire disarmament problem, not only nuclear disarmament, Mr Khrushchev said.

Mr Waters’s first question asked Mr Khrushchev to explain his conception of co-existence between the Soviet and the Western world. Mr Khrushchev replied that the forms of State and social organisation of any particular county must be decided by the people of that country themselves. It was wrong for any State or any external forces to impose on the people of other States their way of life or their political or social system. The appearance of States with Socialist systems “as a result ol objective laws of social development” was just as natural “as was in its day” the natural appearance of bourgeois States. Mr Khrushchev said that to rid mankind of devastating wars, and in particular the threat of nuclear war, the principle of peaceful co-existence and co-operation must prevail between Socialist and capitalist States.

Dangers of Longevity.— The ability of modern science to keep people, alive may in the long run be hurting the human race, according to a University of California biologist, Dr. Hardin B. Jones. Science has kept alive countless humans who ordinarily would have died from disease, he said. As a result, there has been much less natural selection of the fittest, he said. Weaker individuals reproduce children with similar deficiencies. “This may result in severe damage in time,” Di Jones said. —Berkeley (California).