N.A.T.O. ministers in detente mood

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33092, 6 December 1972, Page 19

N.A.T.O. ministers in detente mood

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BRUSSELS, Dec. 5. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s year-end ministerial meetings will get under way in Brussels today amid a growing mood in favour of dismantling the old Cold War barriers in Europe. Foreign and Defence Ministers and top military chiefs from the 15-nation Western alliance are attending a series of meetings at the sprawling N.A.T.O. headquarters during the next four days. The N.A.T.O. military committee, the alliance’s top service group, will start the proceedings in secret conclave today; shortly afterwards there will be a session of the so-called “Eurogroup.” The Eurogroup, set up four years ago, is an informal body grouping defence ministers from 10 of the Euro-

pean members of N.A.T.O. France, which is not a member of the alliance’s integrated military structure, Iceland, and Portugal do not take part. The aim of the Eurogroup is to see how best the European members of the alliance can make a more cohesive contribution to N.A.T.O.’s defence burden — something which the Americans have been more or less pointedly demanding for some time. The Eurogroup ministers are today expected to commit their countries more strongly to co-operation in the development and purchase of new weapons. Such co-operation could, for example, lead in the future to the development of a “Eurotank.” Tomorrow there will be a meeting of the defence planning committee, which brings together the defence ministers of all N.A.T.O. members except France. This committee will study defence plans submitted by member nations for next year

and discuss problems concerning long-term defence planning. / But the main focus of attention is on the meetings on Thursday and Friday of foreign ministers of all 15 member nations, who will be discussing the current major initiatives in the search for East-West detente. These are the Helsinki preparatory talks for a European security conference, N.A.T.O.’s invitation to the Eastern Bloc to attend exploratory meetings aimed at a conference on Central European force reductions, the second phase of the United States-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and the basic treaty between the two Germanys. With all these detente developments moving delicately forward, the foreign ministers are unlikely to take any sensational new decisions this week. Their meeting will be devoted to the tactics to adopt in all the various contacts with the East, and to sorting out differences of approach, within the alliance. In Helsinki the United States affirmed its continued involvement in Europe and its desire for a European conference on security and co-operation. Mr Vai Peterson, the United States representative at preparatory talks by 34 countries to plan the European security conference, said in a policy speech that “central to world peace is a peaceful Europe. “This is the lesson we all have learned from two world wars and from that experience Americans have learned yet another lesson: Europe’s security is indivisible from our own,” the former Nebraska State Governor said.