Chinese move in Geneva

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33478, 8 March 1974, Page 11

Chinese move in Geneva

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) |

GENEVA, March 7. | China has demanded the banning of nuclear weapons as the first step towards updating’ the 25-year-old Geneva War Conventions.

j In a speech to the confer-! • ence of 119 nations reviewing the conventions, the! principal Chinese delegate. 1 • Mr Pi Chi-lung, accused the) ■ United States and the Soviet ; Union of using their nuclear | arsenals to become the over-. Jords of the world. Mr Pi said: “The human-! itarian aspects of the. ground rules for armed conflicts would mean noth-! ing if nuclear weapons were not banned. If humaniitarianism is to be practised,!

a nuclear power should, of its own accord, undertake the obligation of completely prohibiting, and thoroughly destroying, nuclear weapons, and, as the first step, should declare that it will not be the first to use them.

“Any new protocols [should provide unequivocally [for the complete prohibition, and the destruction, of nuclear weapons.”

The draft protocols under consideration by the conference, which opened two weeks ago. make no specific reference to nuclear weapons. Mr Pi also told the conference: “China is joined by many Third World countries: in her belief that it must be! a primary principle of the new protocols to support just wars and oppose unjust wars.”

The principal American delegate, Mr George Aldrich,

had earlier declared: “We must insist that agreed humanitarian standards are complied with in equal measure for the victims of war whose cause we oppose, as well as for those whose cause we support.”

“The introduction into international humanitarian law of ‘just war’ concepts ’ would almost invariably reIsult in lowering the standards of protection accorded to war victims.”

The issue arose during the Vietnam war, when the North Vietnamese refused to accord American prisoners the protection of the Geneva Conventions, alleging that they were fighting a war of aggression. South Vietnam, in turn, held a large part of captured Viet Cong fighters as “civilian detainees” who could claim no prisoner-of-[war status.