NUCLEAR TEST BAN ATOM SECRETS EXCHANGE Former Nazi On Trial

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28890, 9 May 1959, Page 13

NUCLEAR TEST BAN

ATOM SECRETS EXCHANGE

Former Nazi On Trial

Political Effect Emphasised

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, May 8. The Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) said last night that he would like to see a “really effective” Great Power agreement on nuclear test explosions “not only from the medical, but even more important, from the political point of view.”

This was because it would represent an advance in EastWest relations.

He was giving answers in the House of Commons to a barrage of questions about radioactive fallout.

He said nothing could be done to reduce radiation from the principal source to which mankind was exposed—the natural background count. He added: “We must try to reduce medical and industrial radiation.”

Earlier, he said that radiation from fallout was now estimated to be somewhere between one and two per cent, of the „ normal background radiation to which man, so far as was known, had always been exposed. Other points he made were: So far there had been no direct evidence of any genetic effects on man from very low

rates of radiation. Natural radiation varied greatly in different parts of the

world. Radiation was normally lowest in wooden houses. For brick or concrete houses, it was about 25 per cent, higher than outdoors, and the dose was somewhat higher again in stone and especially in granite houses.

U.S. Agreements With Allies PARIS, May 8. A North Atlantic Treaty Organisation spokesman revealed today that the United States had signed agreements this month with West Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, and Turkey, for the exchange of “military nuclear information and training.” This was the first time such arrangements had been made by the United States with any country other than the United Kingdom, the spokesman said. The spokesman said that these agreements were the natural development of N.A.T.O. defence programmes.

The programmes had no aggressive purpose as they have been in process of implementation for over two years. This disposes of any suggestion that they were designed to prejudice the Geneva conference, the spokesman said.

WARSAW, May 8 Fryderyk Tomke, a driver and interpreter for the Nazi occupation regime in Poland, is being tried in Lublin, Poland, for allegedly killing 100 Poles and Jews.

The charges alleged that he killed them by his own hand, or in company with the Nazis, between 1941 and 1944.