"Peoples Hostages In Nuclear Struggle"

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29952, 13 October 1962, Page 11

"Peoples Hostages In Nuclear Struggle"

(N.ZPA.-Reuter—Copyright)

NEW YORK, October 11. Innocent peoples of the world were held as hostages in the power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and other nuclear nations, Ireland’s Foreign Minister (Mi; Frank Aiken) told the Main Political Committee of the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. The committee was debating a motion on a possible ban on nuclear testing. Mr Aiken said there was no moral justification and no sane military reason why an agreement to stop nuclear tests should not be signed immediately.

As a “potential nuclear victim,” Mr Aiken said, he found it difficult to take any great interest in whether the efficiency of nuclear weapons was still further improved to the point where the world could be destroyed 20 or 100 times over.

What did concern him deeply was the constantly increasing danger to the human race from radioactive fallout. If the nuclear Powers did not agree to stop testing and nuclear weapons spread to an ever-growing number of powers, he said, the world could reach the point where human survival would be imperilled even without war.

“This is tantamount to treating the innocent peoples of the world as hostages in a great Power struggle,” he said. Mr Francesco Cavalletti, of Italy, said the Soviet Union’s arguments for rejecting a ban on testing in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space were “not convincing.” He said the Soviet Union wanted another uncontrolled moratorium based on moral and mutual confidence, which unfortunately did not exist, partly because of the Soviet Union’s breaking of the previous moratorium a year ago The Italian delegate said a test ban treaty could be concluded if goodwill was shown by all. It was up to the Soviet Union to decide whether the current seventeenth session of the General Assembly would be the one “to put an end to the ghastly nightmare that weighs on the world.”

Neutrals* Proposals Britain and the United States believed that any nuclear test-ban treaty based on the present Russian interpretation of neutralist proposals made in Geneva would fall

apart within a month, a British source at the United Nations said last night.

The Soviet Union maintains that an international control

commission could visit Soviet territory to clarify any suspicious event only at the invitation of the Soviet Government.

But the West says a refusal to allow entry to the control commission would mean failure to co-operate with the commission, which it says is called for in the memorandum submitted by the eight neutralist nations in the Geneva disarmament conference.

The differing interpretations of East and West have been a stumbling block that

has so far prevented serious negotiations on the memorandum. The eight neutralists. to preserve their mediatory value, have declined to

give their own interpretation of it. The Main Political Committee, which began debate on the test ban issue on Wednesday. is expected to adopt in a few weeks a resolution calling for negotiations on the basis of the eight-Power proposals. The British source said that the West had been trying for four months to get the Soviet Union to negotiate on the neutralist plan, but saw little value in a treaty based on it unless the Soviet Union changed its present attitude.