Small hopes for disarmament

Press, 9 June 1978, Page 12

Small hopes for disarmament

The United Nations special session on disarmament is not producing much of moment. Polemics abound: but if the present trends are continued the world will not be one whit safer when the fiveweek session is over. No-one can reasonably expect the world overnight to start beating its swords into ploughshares, but the appalling billion dollars a day that goes into the production of weapons and weapons research is not only offensive in that it makes the world a more frightening place in which to live; money which could be spent to make the world a better place is going into arms. To some extent the timing of the special session has turned out badly, though not through any fault of its organisers. It has coincided with the negotiations about the nuclear intercontinental arms, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Because these talks are between the super-Powers they tend to overshadow the United Nations session. At the same time there has been increasing concern about human rights and about Soviet activity in Africa. The United States is uncertain about whether the correct way to deal with the Soviet Union is to link progress in the talks with events in all parts of the world, or to deal with each issue separately. The latest position of President Carter is to offer the Soviet Union either detente or confrontation. This is likely to overshadow any moves in the United Nations. The hopeful aspects of the United Nations session have been provided by Canada and. unexpectedly, by France. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Trudeau, said that Canada was the first country’ in the world to divest itself of nuclear arms and that Canada would not build nuclear arms. The Canadian view may not count for much in the debate between the United States and

the Soviet Union, but at least it reveals a positive attitude to disarmament in one quarter. President Giscard d’Estaing presented a new programme to the United Nations session. He advocated the establishment of an international satellite agency which would be used in the verification of arms stocks. He suggested that countries which held an excess of arms should contribute funds for international development, and he wanted a new body other than the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament to deal with disarmament. France has hitherto declined to join the C.C.D. The French initiative must be welcome, though the proposal to give funds for excessive arms is fraught with difficulties. The New Zealand position, as put by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Taiboys, concerned mainly the representation on the C.C.D. New Zealand has not so far been in favour of the C.C.D.’s environmental modification treaty, because it judges it to be defective. New Zealand is not one of the 31 nations which are members of the C.C.D. and countries which do not participate in the C.C.D. deliberations are unlikely to feel bound by its decisions. What Mr Taiboys was saying about the proposal for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the South Pacific seems to mean that this country agrees with the principle but foresees no practical application of the principle; The achievement of the disarmament talks may be no more than an experssion of a will to disarm. Although this will not do much to further the act of disarmament, it suggests that international relations are not always as bad as they might seem. Small“as that achievement might seem it is much better than having the session in New York break down entirely.