Cable briefs

Press, 10 January 1983, Page 8

Cable briefs

Arms boost sought President Ronald Reagan plans to seek another big increase in spending for strategic nuclear arms in his military budget for 1984, the “New York Times” reports. Senior Administration officials said that Mr Reagan had not decided on an exact amount. But the Pentagon wanted $3O billion, about $8 billion more than in the current financial year which ends on September 30. The 1983 level is already nearly double that of 1979, under President Carter. — New York.

Poles want to leave

. More than 1000 of the men and women who were interned under martial law in Poland have since applied to emigrate to the West, the Communist Party newspaper, “Trybuna Ludu” says. 1228 former internees were among 4166 people officially registered as applying to leave from March to December last year. The authorities said early last year that released-internees would be allowed to leave the country if they wished. — Warsaw. Bomb defused British Army explosives experts have defused a bomb left in a pub used by off-duty British soldiers in a Belfast suburb of Crumlin. A spokesman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary said a young man had walked into the Cobweb pub in Crumlin shortly after it opened, placed a satchel on the floor and announced the parcel was set to explode. The man fled and Army bomb disposal experts were called to defuse the device. — Belfast. N-waste bill

President Reagan has signed a bill establishing a system for permanent disposal of toxic radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. The act requires the Department of Energy to recommend three sites to the President by 1985 for the first waste repository. The President would have until March, 1987. to pick the location of the’ first facility, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would be required to issue a licence for a repository within three years. — Washington. Cherbourg protest About 3000 anti-nuclear activists from several Western European countries have marched through Cherbourg to demand a halt to French reprocessing of nuclear waste and the release of the impounded Greenpeace vessel, the Sirius. The march coincided with a protest by about 100 anti-nuclear militants outside the Japanese Embassy in Paris against the impending arrival of a shipment of nuclear waste from Japan ..for recycling in France, an embassy employee said. — Cherbourg.