Co-operation In Space Urged

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32127, 24 October 1969, Page 11

Co-operation In Space Urged

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW, October 23.

The Soviet Union Communist Party chief (Mr Leonid Brezhnev) said yesterday that the Russians were on the threshold of putting manned orbital stations in space as the startingpoint for flights to other planets.

Mr Brezhnev was speaking at a mass rally at the Kremlin to honour the seven cosmonauts who orbited the earth last week in three Soyuz spacecraft.

Mr Brezhnev recalled the “outstanding flight” of the American Apollo astronauts to the moon, and added that the Russians favoured cooperation in space exploration.

“Our own science has come close to the creation of longterm orbital stations and laboratories, and decisive means of the broad conquering of cosmic space,” he said.

I “Our scientists see such sta-; tions as tbe highway of man! in space, and that they could I become cosmodromes, the! starting-point in space for ! flights to other planets." AMERICAN CALL In Atlanta, Georgia, last; ■night, the former United. .States Secretary of State (Mr (Dean Rusk) called for “a [division of labour” between [the United States and the! Soviet Union in space exploration. “While Russia explores Venus, we can explore Mars, and then we can exchange information,” Mr Rusk told guests at a United Nations; international student ban- 1 quet. “We must look for ways in these areas of common interest that can help blunt the ; sharp political issues that divide the world,” Mr Rusk said. “With the success of Apollo 11, surely the time has come : to abandon the idea that we’re in a space race with ' the Soviet Union.”