Schmidt endorses call for end to arms race

Press, 16 June 1982, Page 8

Schmidt endorses call for end to arms race

NZPA-Reuter New. York Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said yesterday that governments should not brush aside the worldwide groundswell in support of disarmament but should regard it as a motivating •force. He was addressing a special session of the United Nations General Assembly' on disarmament, 48 hours after the biggest anti-war rally in American history was held peacefully in New York; City. As he spoke, hundreds more dembnstrators were being arrested by the police for blocking streets outside the United Nations missions of the five nuclear powers - the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China. “Not only here in New

York, but in many countries we have been witnessing in the past few days and weeks, gatherings of young and older people who are voicing their fear of a terrible arid excessive arms build-up and an ‘overkill’ that can no longer be rationally comprehended.” he said. He said he knew a reduction in weapons arsenals could not be achieved through plebiscites, and the “great breakthrough that would eliminate the danger of. war once and for all remains. a dangerous illusion;”. Unilateral disarmament, opening the door to pressure by other powers, must be recognised by any reasonable person as extremely dangerous, he said. - “Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the great and positive moral force

which emerges in the movement for effective disarmament. We should not simply push aside those who support, that movement, dismissing them as amateurs who lack sufficient insight. “Instead, the driving force that has become apparent in the unrest of many of our fellow citizens must be regarded as a motivation -and moral obligation for us."

The British Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) will address the 157-member body tomorrow and President Reagan is scheduled to speak on Friday. The Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Andrei Gromyko), who took his seat in the assembly hall shortly before Mr Schmidt began' his address, had originally been listed to speak yesterday but will now take''the floor today.