TEST BAN TREATY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29324, 1 October 1960, Page 13

TEST BAN TREATY

Control Posts Considered (Rec. 8 p.m.) GENEVA, Sept. 30 A wrangle over the proposed nuclear control posts to be established in Australia under a testban treaty took place during the East-West conference in Geneva today. The British delegate. Sir Michael Wright, proposed a six-year plan for a global network of 180 control posts to police tests. The Soviet delegate, Mr Semyon Tsarapkin, asked why the seven control posts Russia had planned for Australia had been omitted in the British proposal. Sir Michael Wright replied that he could not speak for Australia and that it was up to the Australian Government to decide if it was ready to accept posts. He admitted that Australia was, perhaps, a special case because nuclear tests had been carried out there.

Earlier, he proposed four posts to be set up in Australia four years after a treaty came into force. The treaty, he suggested, should be in three phases—Australia to be concerned with the third.

Hie plan would create the basis for a working test ban control within its first two years. The first phase of four years, provides for the setting up of 36 control posts, including 20 on islands and some on ships. The second phase, of one year, would complete the Northern Hemisphere network and start-the network in the Southern Hemisphere. The third and last phase would complete the southern controls.

The first phase would establish controls in the United States. Britain, the Soviet Union and the Pacific nuclear test islands. Mr Tsarapkin said that the 20 proposed controls for the Soviet were too many and said 15 would be, Ibe < U&ted States delegate, Mr Charles Steele, welcomed the British proposal, which, he said, was a “very helpful incentive” to the work of the conference, which win meet again on Monday.