Criticism Of Attitude To Disarmament

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29824, 17 May 1962, Page 15

Criticism Of Attitude To Disarmament

New Zealand, in its reply to the inquiry from the Secre-tary-General of the United Nations concerning conditions under which countries without nuclear weapons might be willing to enter into agreement not to acquire them or allow them on their territories. had made excuses similar to those of Soviet representatives, isays a letter to the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) from the assistant secretary of the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Mrs E. V. Hardie). The Prime Minister, replying to the United Nations, said that New Zealand depended for its defence on alliance with nuclear powers and that the chief responsibility for the control of nuclear weapons lay with all the countries possessing them. Any agreement binding some states could increase rather than diminish international tension and in particular the danger of aggression, said the Prime Minister. “We are deeply disappointed that our country has failed to grasp an unusual

opportunity to make a practical move towards world disarmament,” says the letter from the Christchurch branch of the campaign. “Your statement makes it clear that New Zealand will make agreements to ban nuclear weapons on our territory only when the much more difficult and complex problem of complete disarmament has been solved.

“Obviously, if all partial steps are to be postponed until all nations can agree on the whole, the arms race will grow increasingly unmanageable,” the letter says. “The nuclear powers 'pass the buck’ to the non-nuclear states and these ‘pass the buck' back again. "According to a New York cable of March 13 this year, commenting on a Soviet offer to withhold nuclear weapons and the information required to produce them if the Western Powers would do the same. Reuter’s said Britain qualified its attitude because, as a nuclear Power, it could not take a stand on the question of non-nuclear states forswearing possession of nuclear weapons. This was a matter for these Governments themselves to decide. “Some nations, somewhere, some time, have to make definite moves to get out of this impasse, and we feel sure that many New Zealanders are prepared for much bolder action to be taken by our own country,” the letter says.