Experts agree chances are high of nuclear war

Press, 8 May 1978, Page 8

Experts agree chances are high of nuclear war

NZPA-Reuter Toronto United States and Russian experts attending a conference in Toronto to assess the chances of nu» clear war breaking out by the year 2000 agreed that there was a serious danger.

About 30 high-level experts from 10 countries, including all the nuclear Powers except China, met under the auspices of the Pugwash organisation, a loose international grouping concentrating on the implications of the nuclear age.

Delegates were asked at a press conference how

they rated the danger of a nuclear war occurring by the end of the century. Dr George Arbatov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, said the world could not expect to live with the danger of nuclear war for the next 30 years as it had managed to do so since the dawn of the nuclear age.

“The risks are very great, and if the situation remains as now, if we don’t manage to turn the tide and put into life serious arms-control measures . • . then we have all the chances to be in a very difficult situation in the very near future,” he said.

Mr W. McGeorge Bundy, a former special

assistant for national security at the White House, said: “That we have a small chance (of nuclear war) makes it a very big problem.”

The most urgent issue was the successful conclusion of a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. Such an agreement would not bring any significant reduction in the arsenals of the superpowers, he said. “But if successful it would set the stage for further efforts that would bring a real re» duction.”

Britain’s Lord Zuckerman, formerly chief scientific adviser to the British Government, said

that if a nuclear war broke out in Europe, there was no mechanism to prevent its spreading. Asked about the dangers of terrorist groups acquiring nuclear bombs, Lord Zuckerman said: “Terrorists are out to get the sympathy of the world, and if they get nuclear weapons they would lose it. There are other ways to spread terror.” The Canadian Prime Minister (Mr Pierre Trudeau) whose Government was embarrassed in 1974 when India used Canadian supplied technology to detonate its first nuclear device, attended the session of the conference but did not appear at the news conference.