Soviets ‘have tested neutron weapon’

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 8

Soviets ‘have tested neutron weapon’

NZPA-Reuter Bonn A leading West German disarmament expert said yes terday that an East-West disarmament commission which visited Moscow in June had concluded that the Soviet Union had tested neutron weapons. . Egon Bahr, a member of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic Party, said the Soviets provided evidence of such tests to the commission, which is chaired by the former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. “We in the Palme commission received a Soviet paper on neutron weapons in Moscow this June, from which it can be concluded that the Soviet Union has tested neutron warheads,” Mr Bahr told NZPA-Reuter.

“I have no doubt that they

already have the neutron weapon.”

The French Defence Minister (Mr Charles Hernu) said on August 10 the Soviets had tested a neutron weapon but he did not believe any explosions had taken place. A group of American senators said they had been told by the Soviet President (Mr Leonid Brezhnev) during a visit to Moscow in November, 1978, that the Soviet Union had already tested a neutron warhead but had dropped the project.

Mr Bahr, one of the pioneers of Bonn’s reconciliation with Communist Eastern Europe, has spearheaded recent criticism in West Germany of President Reagan's decision to produce neutron weapons for stockpiling in the United States.

Mr Bahr said American officials told him in 1978 they believed the Soviet Union was about six months behind the United States in research on neutron technology. Supporters of neutron weapons say they are an ideal response to the Soviet Union's huge tank strength in Central Europe and are no more inhuman than existing nuclear arms.

Opponents say the warheads will start a new round of the East-West arms race and lower the threshold for a nuclear war.

In Washington, the State Department said yesterday that the neutron bomb would not be included in any United States-Soviet negotiations on long-range nuclear weapons based in Europe.