Warning N-blast plan ‘no longer favoured’

Press, 13 November 1981, Page 6

Warning N-blast plan ‘no longer favoured’

NZPA Washington The United States and its allies are maintaining the option of firing a warning nuclear blast to stop a Soviet invasion in Europe, but have not worked out a detailed plan. Reagan Administration officials have said. “It remains a general option available to the alliance," said one official, who emphasied that the goal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation strategy is to keep the Soviets off-guard. “But it is an option that has increasingly been viewed in recent years as unattractive, purely as to its effectiveness in deterring further Soviet aggression.” President Reagan told a news conference this week that there was still confusion over the status of the warn-ing-shot option. But the official, who asked that his name be withheld, made it clear that the option has not been cancelled, although N.A.T.O. has not worked out a strategy for exploding the warning shot. The deputy presidential press secretary, Larry Speakes, said, meanwhile, Mr Reagan had been briefed several times on N.A.T.O. contingencies, but declined to discuss the option at his news conference because “under our general guidelines, contingencies are not discussed.” Mr Reagan had told re-

porters “there seems to be some confusion as to whether that is still a part of N.A.T.O. strategy or not, and so far I’ve had no answer to that.” The option traced in interviews back more than 30 years to the Truman Administration, is considered less feasible now that Soviet military might is roughly equivalent to that of the United States. In secret N.A.T.O. planning councils, strategists long have pondered the possibility that a nuclear warning might be fired over the sea or into the air to turn back a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. West European governments, meanwhile, have maintained diplomatic silence on the President’s controversial statements on the possibility of nuclear war in Europe. But Britain’s Labour Oppositions spokesman on foreign affairs, Denis Healey, said he was appalled by what he termed the American’s apparent indecision on nuclear strategy. Mr Healey said in a television interview: “I think that what President Reagan said yesterday is worth a million votes to the unilateral (disarmament) movement in Europe.” In a separate radio interview Mr Healey said that contradictory statements by American officials were to blame for growing antinuclear protests.

He said: “This is what worries people, the feeling that those in charge of this terrifying panoply of nuclear weapons in the United States are careless, inconsistent, and confused about the power they possess, and this cannot be denied.” In Brussels, N.A.T.O. sources said it was important to keep the Soviet Union guessing about the Western allies’ nuclear strategy. But they said that unfortunately Mr Reagan and his Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) had also created confusion among the public in N.A.T.O. States. In West Germany, a television commentator reported: “There was nothing new out of Washington tonight, so we can rest unassured. If Mr Reagan does not know whether N.A.T.O. plans to include a nuclear warning shot, how are we expected to tell?” In Moscow, the Soviet Union attacked President Reagan's assertion that a limited nuclear war could be fought in Europe and branded his ideas dangerous and absurd. The official news agency, Tass, said Mr Reagan’s latest remarks on nuclear policy showed that Washington and Moscow held diametrically opposite views on the possibility of restricting any nuclear exchange.