MISSILE CUT WANTED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31275, 23 January 1967, Page 13

MISSILE CUT WANTED

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Jan. 22.

The Johnson Administration will urge Congress next week to soft-pedal demands for an anti-ballistic missile system while American-Soviet talks continue on ways to avert another spiralling arms race. The Defence Secretary, Mr Robert McNamara, and General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff, are due to testify on the Administration's position in closed Congressional hearings beginning next Monday. Although the military chiefs are reported to favour at least a limited United States deployment of antimissile devices, General Wheeler was expected to join Mr McNamara in advising caution until the results of diplomatic contacts with the Russians are known.

State Department officials expressed guarded optimism that top-level talks in Wash-

ington might find the Russians responsive to President Johnson’s hope that the Soviet Union would abandon any plans it might have to build a full-scale anti-ballistic missile system around its cities and defence installations.

Mr Johnson told Congress in his nationally-televised State of the Union address on January 10 that the Soviet Union was constructing a limited A.B.M. system around Moscow. But he resisted demands for an immediate matching move on the part of the United States, saying that he would mark time while he pressed for favourable Soviet reaction to proposals for arms control measures.

Officials said the Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, in his talks with the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, said it would be regrettable if an A.B.M. race opened as the two countries appeared to be moving towards an agreement on a treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons. The Administration, they said, feared that a Soviet decision to press ahead with an A.B.M. system would force

the United States to follow suit. Each country would end up wasting thousands of millions of dollars without altering the strategic balance.