N.A.T.O. rejects freeze plan

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 7

N.A.T.O. rejects freeze plan

NZPA-Reuter Vienna The Soviet bloc has proposed a freeze on military manpower levels of Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation levels in Central Europe while the opposing alliances negotiate a troops-reduction agreement. The plan, modifying a similar offer made four years ago, promptly was labelled unacceptable by a N.A.T.O. spokesman at the 19-nation Vienna conference on force reductions. Under the new proposal, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia. East Germany, and Poland would freeze their collective forces until a final reduction plan was agreed.

On the N.A.T.O. side, the United States, Belgium, Britair., Canada, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg would make a similar freeze, also collectively. Communist officials said the plan had been revised to answer Western protests that the original country-by-country freeze would hamper N.A.T.O. plans for a flexible Western defence system.

A N.A.T.O. spokesman, M.- Aurelius Fernandez, said th? West had always rejected a freeze during the Vienna discussions on the ground that any arrangement based on disputed data would be unworkable and would become a “source of misunderstanding.”