Nuclear weapons

Press, 16 June 1979, Page 14

Nuclear weapons

Sir, — Like her country's military leaders, S. Westermann (June 13) suffers from a self-induced obsession with' an illusory Soviet ‘‘military threat,” which over many years has proved to be as groundless as ‘‘the numbers of nuclear warships,” (pre-' sumably Soviet) “in the vicinity of Australia and New Zealand.” One cannot easily forget the Prime Minister’s far-, cical performance in his TV, confrontation with Simon Walker when he made his hi- i larious claims of Soviet warships “steaming through the' Tasman.” This red herring strategy, designed to scare New Zealanders into accepting United States nuclear warships in our ports, is fall-. ing on ears increasingly conditioned to a deafness of cy-. nical apathy. The Harrisburg reactor incident and the DCIO crash at Chicago’s airport are arousing fears among New Zealanders of infinitely greater danger from United States nuclear warships in our ports than from imaginary Soviet “threats.” — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. June 13, 1979.