Kremlin N-arms pledge

Press, 17 June 1982, Page 9

Kremlin N-arms pledge

• NZPA-Reuter New York ( The Soviet Union pledged i yesterday not to be the first I to use nuclear weapons. 1 President Leonid Brezhnev : made the promise in a mes- ■ sage read for him by his - Foreign Minister (Mr Andrei ■ Gromyko) at a special United ; Nations session on disarmaI ment. i “This obligation shall bei come effective immediately, ■ on the moment it is made public from the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly." Mr Brezhnev said in the message. Applause greeted the announcement He said that, in contrast, the military doctrine of N.A.T.0.. including the United States, was actually based on the dangerous premise of nuclear weaponry. "If the other nuclear Powers assume an equally precise and clear obligation not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, that would be tantamount in practice to a ban on the use of nuclear weapons altogether, which is espoused by the overwhelming majority of the countries of the world," Mr Brezhnev said. “In the conduct of its policy, the Soviet Union will naturally continue to take into account how other nuclear powers act, whether they heed the voice of reason and follow our good example or push the world downhill." He also called for the elimination of chemical weapons. “We are prepared to agree without delay on the complete prohibition of chemical weapons and destruction of their stockpiles." The objective of his initiative had been to raise the degree of trust in relations among States. 1 Trust had been gravely crippled by the efforts of those who were trying 'to upset the balance of forces to gain military superiority over the Soviet Union and its allies and to wreck all the positive elements that the policy of detente brought, he said. But American officials said that Mr Brezhnev’s pledge reflected an old proposal repeatedly rejected by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The State Department had no detailed reaction to the pledge. But a spokesman for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said that such a pledge was unacceptable to the West because nuclear weapons might be needed as a last resort to stop any Soviet assault on Europe with overwhelming conventional arms. In April,, the American Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) had set out the United States position when he said that the no-first-use proposal was “tantamount to making Europe safe for conventional aggression.” The agency’s spokesman said that Moscow may have revived the Issue now in an effort to counter President Ronald Reagan’s recent arms control proposals which have been welcomed in Europe.