Shuttle worries Russia

Press, 20 April 1981, Page 6

Shuttle worries Russia

NZPA Moscow The Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, has made an implicit call on the United States to restart talks aimed at banning military activity in space. In a speech quoted by the Tass news agency, he said: “The Soviet Union has been , and remains, a: convinced advocate of the development of businesslike international co-operation in outer space.” The Kremlin leader, who was presenting awards to a Soviet and a Mongolian cosmonaut, said: ‘‘May the shoreless cosmic ocean be pure and free of weapons of any kind. .

“We are for joint efforts to reach a great and humanitarian aim to preclude the militarisation of outer space.” Mr Brezhnev made no direct reference to the American shuttle programme which made its successful maiden flight earlier this week. His words were plainly aimed at the project, however, and at Pentagon's plans to use the re-usable shuttle craft to send surveillance Sment into space and to at Soviet satellites. Soviet and United States officials briefly discussed

anti-satellite programmes at meetings in Switzerland, but the negotiations broke off inconclusively in 1979. In the run-up to the shuttle’s launch last Sunday the Soviet press attacked the United States space programme as being aimed at seeking to turn outer space into a battle arena to further “America’s dominance of the Earth.” Russia herself is believed to be running an intense programme to build a “killer” satellite, one of which was reported to have successfully destroyed another satellite in space last month.