Call for N-ban

Press, 23 February 1978, Page 8

Call for N-ban

NZPA-Reuter Geneva The Soviet Union and six communist allies have formally tabled a document in Geneva urging agreement by all States to stop producing nuclear weapons, whether atomic, hydrogen, or neutron bombs or missiles. The call came in a working paper on a comprehensive programme of disarmament submitted to the 30-nation Geneva Disarmament Conference.

The Soviet delegate (Mr Viktor Likhachev) said the document was based on proposals advanced by communist countries last September, and others put forward in the last three or four months. The demand for a simulta-

neous halt to all nuclear weapon production was raised by the Soviet President (Mr Leonid Brezhev) in a speech last November in Moscow. He described it then as a radical step. Reiterating the Soviet proposal in Geneva, Mr Likhachev said it was one of several principal areas where States should seek international agreements in a comprehensive disarmament programme.

Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, and Poland cosponsored the document with the Soviet Union. Communist Rumania, which is also a member of the conference but follows an independent line in foreign policy, was not associated with it.