Leaders Define Test-Ban Tactics

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30171, 1 July 1963, Page 11

Leaders Define Test-Ban Tactics

(N ZP. A .-Reuter—Copy rig tit)

BRIGHTON, June 30.

Britain and the United States in high-level talks with the Soviet Union next month will seek agreement on a treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, under water and underground, according to authoritative sources.

Western tactics at this crucial Moscow meeting, opening on July 15, were the chief -topic of discussion at the first session of the meeting between President Kennedy and the British Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) at Birch Grove, Sussex, yesterday.

Today President Kennedy and Mr Macmillan will study the American proposal for a N.A.T.O. nuclear force of surface vessels manned by international crews.

If the Soviet Union rejects a comprehensive treaty involving effectdve _ international on-site inspection, then the West will propose a partial agreement leaving out underground tests. The sources said during the talks the West would try to get away from the "numbers game”—the protracted arguments about the number of international inspections needed to ensure that a test ban agreement is not being broken through clandestine underground blasts. This has hitherto deadlocked the testban negotiations at the Geneva Disarmament Conference

If the Soviet Union continued to allege that the West wanted international inspections solely for espionage reasons, then the Russians would be asked to submit a basis for their claim that all underground tests can be detected by existing national stations, the sources said. The Soviet Union has already rejected Western offers of a partial test-ban treaty, unless it is coupled with an uncontrolled moratorium on nuclear tests. The sources said the West however did not intend to accept a moratorium because the Soviet Union had already unilaterally broken an EastWest gentleman’s agreement not to test by carrying out a massive series of explosions in September. 1961. Mr Kennedy and Mr Macmillan yesterday mapped out proposals for the British Minister of Science <Lord Hailsham) and the American Under-Secretary of State (Mr Harriman),• who will represent them at the Moscow negotiations. Laos Situation

Authoritative American sources said Mr Harriman would also be authorised to talk about measures to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and also about the situation in Laos. Mr Harriman, a former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, knows Mr Khrushchev personally and was one of the architects of last year’s internet tonal agreement in Geneva on Laotian neutrality, which is how threatened by renewed fighting in the kingdom. American officials at Brighton attach great importance to a possible link between a test-ban agreement and subsequent measures<iesigned to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The publicly-stated American view is that there is nothing in the proposed international N.A.T.O. nuclear force to preyent agreement with the Soviet Union on the non-proliferation issue. British officials said, however, that the President and Mr Macmillan would obviously consider the impact of the proposed international force on the forthcoming Moscow negotiations. It was clear that Britain would not wish to do anything which might prejudice a deal with the Soviet Union on a nuclear

test ban agreement, officials said.

About 100 demonstrators for nuclear disarmament aw.-.ited the President when he arrived at Birch Grove, Mr Macmillan's country residence, yesterday. The flew to Gatwick airport, 26 miles south of London, after a four-day visit to Ireland. Mr Macmillan, the Foreign , Secretary (Lord Home), and the American Secretary of State (Mr Rusk) greeted him at the airport.

President Kennedy, in a short and informal speech, emphasised the importance of trying to get a nuclear test ban agreement with the Soviet Union. “If we could have some degree of control over nuclear matters, then all the long Anglo-American efforts for peace and order and a sense of security would be mort than justified,” he said.