U.S. nuclear policy ‘insane’

Press, 13 August 1980, Page 9

U.S. nuclear policy ‘insane’

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Soviet Union -.has debounced as bloodthirsty and insane the new American strategy for limited nuclear war, disclosed by Washington last week. It amounted, said Tass hews agency in Moscow’s first response, to a threat to strike a first blow at Soviet military bases. •- The strategy, as- outlined by American officials last week, would give priority, to prolonged, small-scale attacks on Soviet military targets, a sharp shift from earlier plans for immediate, allout destruction of Soviet cities and industrial, complexes.

A Tass commentator, Yuri Kornilov, said that while the rest of the world favoured nuclear disarmament, Washington was publicly adopting a bloodthirsty plan of nuclear attack on another State. “It must be said outright

that it ds only rabid militarists — who have lost all touch witT reality and are prepared to push the world into the abyss of nuclear holocaust for the sake ’of their imperial strivings — who can conceive and sanction such plans,” he said. “All who treasure peace and security resolutely raise their voices against the insane .steps of the Carter Administration, in matters related to nuclear arms,” said the: commentary. It scorned American assertions that there was anything new in. the strategy. President Harry Truman Had threatened limited nuclear strikes in 1952, it said, and now those insane plans were being revived. President Carter signed the new strategy into effect last month but the formal White House announcement has been delayed to avoid a nuclear debate at the Democratic convention in New York.