ACCORD ON TEST BAN

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30190, 23 July 1963, Page 15

ACCORD ON TEST BAN

Treaty Ready For Initialling (N ZPJt -Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, July 22. Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union enter their second week of test ban talks today with all the signs that some kind of agreement will be reached before the week ends. An expert drafting committee will meet this morning and the chief negotiators —Mr Andrei Gromyko (Russia), Lord Hailsham (Britain) and Mr Averell Harriman—will meet at 3 p.m. (noon G.M.T.). In Washington United States Administration sources confirmed Moscow reports that a draft of a nuclear test-ban treaty was now ready for initialling.

Barring unforeseen obstacles, the sources said, it was hoped the draft would be initialled by the negotiators within a few days. The Washington sources said that, once initialled, the draft would be submitted for Government action in the three capitals. In the case of the United States, it would ga to the Senate for ratification.

Sources close to the United States and British delegations said there was basic agreement on a draft partial treaty. What remained to be done was in the main com-

pletion of a few passages of the treaty banning tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. There is 'still no suggestion that Mr Khrushchev is making his proposal for a non-aggression pact between the North Atlantic Treaty and the Warsaw Pact a condition for a partial test ban. Many Washington experts believe that the Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Khrushchev) would not have expressed his optimism about the prospects of a treaty, as he has done several times in recent days, if he intended to tie it to a non-aggression pact. Mr Khrushchev talked for an hour yesterday with Mr Harriman as the impression grew in Western circles that

the initialling of a treaty was imminent. Informed sources said the Soviet Prime Minister and the chief American delegate, with Mr Foy Kohler, the American Ambassador, talked in a reception room behind Mr Khrushchev’s box in the Lenin Stadium, where they had been watching a SovietAmerican athletics match.