SOFT ANSWER BY KENNEDY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29766, 8 March 1962, Page 15

SOFT ANSWER BY KENNEDY

Soviet Threat To Resume Tests ( N -Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 7. President Kennedy has met Mr Khrushchev’s denunciation of his decision to resume atmospheric nuclear testing with a soft answer aimed at trying to bring about renewed negotiations. Behind the President’s short reply yesterday to the Soviet Prime Minister’s latest Note was a determination, officials said, to press on with the attempt to break the three-year-old deadlock over the nuclear test ban issue and thereby to create a climate of optimism for general disarmament talks.

Mr Khrushchev yesterday told President Kennedy that if he carried out his threat to resume nuclear tests in the atmosphere Russia would automatically be forced to resume tests also. He asked why it was necessary for the United States to hold more tests. The text of the Note was broadcast by the Soviet news agency, Tass. In it Mr Khrushchev called the American decision to resume atmospheric tests a “new expression of an aggressive course in international affairs.” It was also a blow to next week’s Geneva disarmament conference. New Weapon If past tests by America and her allies were followed by further tests Russia would be forced to conduct more tests to perfect a “new type of weapon’’ to protect world peace. Mr Khrushchev’s message to the President regretted the British and American refusal to open the Geneva disarmament conference at summit level. But he agreed that the meeting should open at foreign minister level. He recalled that disarmament negotiations had been going on for 15 years now without producing any results. It would be shortsighted to rely again on the methods which had proved to be ineffective in the past. It was the clear duty of the states participating in the negotiations to find new and more reliable methods of con. ducting them. Mr Khrushchev reiterated repeated statements that the Soviet Union is ready to accept Western proposals on disarmament controls provided the West accepts Soviet proposals on general and full disarmament. Nuclear Tests About President Kennedy’s decision to resume nuclear tests, Mr Khrushchev said: “However much you may try to justify this decision, there can be no two opinions that it is a new expression of an aggressive course in international affairs, a blow to the 18-states disarmament committee. which is on the point of beginning its work, a blow to the forthcoming disarmament talks “Anybody who is not animated by the special purpose of misleading world public opinion must realise that if the United States and its allies add another series of tests to the tests that have already been held to improve their nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union will be forced to carry out tests of new types of its own weapons, which in such circumstances may became essential for strengthening her security and preserving world peace ” “Chain Reaction” Mr Khrushchev said: “You are beginning a new round in creating ever more lethal types of nuclear weapons. You are, so to speak, unleasing a chain reaction, which will become ever more stormy." He said President Kennedy had repeatedly asserted that American nuclear weapon stocks excelled those of Russia. United States military leaders also had boasted they could wipe the Soviet

Union and her allies off the face of the earth. "On the other hand you now say the United States must carry out nuclear weapon tests allegedly so as not to be left behind the Soviet Union in arms. Here, clearly, the two ends do not meet,” said Mr Khrushchev. “We should like to compete with the United States and other states in the creation of better conditions for the peaceful life of people. We should like to join our efforts to yours in the cause of strengthening world peace,” Mr Khrushchev said. “Greatest Danger” After saying that the United States decision to carry out a new series of tests was aimed at perfecting and accumulating precisely those types of modern weapons which represent the greatest danger, Mr Khrushchev asked: “Then what are we to agree upon during the disarmament talks? “Maybe an answer is expected of the Soviet Union expressing its willingness to agree, before the United States begins its nuclear tests in April, to an agreement containing conditions already rejected by us. “I hope that this is not expected of us, because otherwise this would look very much like atomic blackmail. Such methods with relation to the Soviet Union have never brought anybody laurels in the past and will prove fruitless today and tomorrow.” Kennedy’s Reply Late yesterday, Mr Khrushchev received a letter from the President saying it was time to make real progress towards disarmament and not "engage in sterile exchanges of propaganda.” President Kennedy welcomed Mr Khrushchev’s

agreement to a Foreign Ministers’ conference before the 18-nation disarmament talks in Geneva next week. Mr Khrushchev also sent a message to Mr Macmillan today, but it was much more restrained in tone and wording. He said he noted with satisfaction that the exchange of messages between leaders had brought out common agreement on the importance of the disarmament talks, and the necessity for direct participation by top leaders. American officials said today that the United States and Britain had been conferring on modifications which might be made to the test ban treaty which they offered the Soviet Union last April. Inspection Techniques Officials said they would be based on improvements in inspection techniques and would form the basis of a new attempt to make controls over any test ban agreement mo-re acceptable to the Russians. The President said In his televised speech last Friday that the United States would offer at the Geneva disarmament talks “a series of concrete plans for a major break-through to peace.” That was the address in which he announced that the United States would resume atmospheric nuclear testing unless the Soviet Union in the meantime agreed to an effective test ban treaty. The President also said that the British-American proposals for a nuclear test ban treaty would be resubmitted “with appropriate arrangements for detection and verification” and with "new modifications. ... in the light of new experience.” Officials said last night the President believed that the temptation to engage in a propaganda battle must be avoided and that the talks in Geneva must be placed on a realistic basis. They minimised talk of contradiction between statements made in the last few days by the British Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) and the head of the United States Disarmament Agency. Mr William Foster, as to possible easing of Western inspection demands. Macmillan’s View Mr Macmillan said in the House of Commons this week: “The remarkable advances of scientific instruments may make it easier to arrange for some sort of international verification without some of the difficulties which have hitherto made it difficult for the Russians to accept.” In spite of the contrary impression given by Mr Foster in a television interview programme last Sunday when he suggested that United States inspection demands might be increased, officials said that there was not actually as much contradiction as there might seem on the surface. They explained that what Mr Foster had in mind was the problem of guaranteeing that the Soviet Union would not again be able secretly to prepare for testing. TTiat, in a sense, would require more extensive arrangements for verification. But it was also possible in the light of what Mr Macmillan had said, the officials added, that improvements in detection techniques would make adjustments possible.