NAVAL STRENGTHS East-West talks urged on Britain

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32677, 5 August 1971, Page 13

NAVAL STRENGTHS East-West talks urged on Britain

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, August 4. Britain’s Opposition Labour Party today urged the West to accept Russia’s “invitation” to talk about reducing naval forces in the Mediterranean and in the Indian Ocean.

In a foreign policy statement approved by the party leadership, it said that such an East-West agreement would help to make sure that the Indian Ocean did not become “a new cold war battlefield” if the Suez Canal were reopened.

The Russian “invitation” referred to was presumably the call made in June by the First Secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party (Mr Leonid Brezhnev) for a reduction of United States-Russian naval strength in distant waters. The Labour statement said that an agreement to reduce foreign naval forces in both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean would leave the British Government without any plausible excuse for its policy of supplying arms to South Africa.

Conservative Cabinet Ministers have argued that their

arms-for-South-Afnca proP°sals are prompted partly by the growing Russian naval strength in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. Mr Denis Healey who is likely to be Foreign Secretary ln an V futur e Labour Government tol(j reporters he V is U aiised also across-the-board force reductions of sto 10 per cent by both East and West in Europe, Replying to questions at a press conference, Mr Healey said he did not think that! President Nixon’s plan to visit Peking would damage United States-Soviet Union relations. He said that a “competition for peace” seemed to be breaking out among the three greatest Powers Russia, the United States and China and he hoped that the Soviet Union would come to realise that American-Chinese relations, and Soviet-Chinese relations, were extremely important. Mr Healey is to visit China next April. The policy statement re-

ferred to possible East-West i talks on mutual and balanced! force reductions after welcoming and supporting efforts to improve the position ofj Berlin. It said that the conference the Labour Party proposes should be attended by senior Ministers, who would set the framework for detailed discussions by standing committees.

The findings of these committees should be reported to further conferences, which the party hoped would provide permanent machinery enabling countries with different political systems to replace confrontation by co-operation. The Soviet Union has repeatedly called for a European security, though Mr Healey noted it has lately dropped the word “security.” Britain and other N.A.T.O. countries have made it clear they are willing to hold multilateral talks to explore the feasibility of a European security conference, but only I after a settlement of the Berlin problem.