Carter approves cash for N-bomb

Press, 11 August 1977, Page 9

Carter approves cash for N-bomb

NZPA-Reuter Washington

President Carter has signed legislation providing money to produce the neutron bomb, provided he decides later this month the weapon is needed. Mr Carter has said he will decide whether to produce the weapon after getting a new Pentagon study in August.

An undisclosed sum for neutron bomb production is contained in a $lO,OOO million Public Works Bill which Mr Carter approved in Plains, Georgia, where he is on a working vacation. The weapon is designed to kill enemy soldiers mainly through radiation, with less blast and heat than caused by existing atomic bombs. The Senate last month approved neutron bomb funds but reserved the right for Congress to reverse a production decision when more is known about its implications.

In Moscow the Soviet Union has attacked President Carter for signing the bill, charging that Washington intends to start “a new wasteful and extremely dan-

gerous round”- in the arms race.

“The present master of the White House is known to use widely in the course of the election campaign calls for curbing the arms race and strengthening detente,” said a commentary by a veteran Tass news agency commentator, Yuri Kornilov.

“But hardly had the election battles died away as the U.S. military budget began to soar and the Pentagon began intensively mastering new types and kinds of mass-destruction weapons.

“The sanctioning by Mr Carter of the manufacture of neutron warheads does not tally with Washington’s publicity statements for peace, disarmament, and virtual liquidation of the nuclear weapon,” the Soviet news agency said. In Nagasaki, Mr Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe, present President of the United Nations General Assembly, said on Monday that strengthening the resolve to abolish nuclear weapons is the only response that should be made to the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.