Symbolic freeze vote tied to arms cuts

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 6

Symbolic freeze vote tied to arms cuts

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The United States House of Representatives has approved a resolution calling for a United States-Soviet freeze on atomic weapons, giving the nuclear freeze movement a victory and President Reagan a defeat.

The House voted 278 to 149 for the resolution yesterday. But Mr Reagan would almost certainly veto the freeze resolution if the Senate approved it, which is unlikely.

The freeze resolution is non-binding and largely symbolic. Just before final approval in the House, Reagan supporters were able to modify the resolution so that any United States-Soviet freeze would be abrogated if not followed in a specified time by nuclear reductions favoured by him. The mainly Republican opponents of the resolution had headed off certain House approval for nearly two months but agreed to a final vote shortly, after winning the change. Both sides sought to claim victory over the wording, opponents assert-

ing that it was a major step away from the straightforward freeze first advocated, and sponsors saying the modification had at least retained the central principle of having a weapons freeze.

Mr Reagan says that a freeze would grant the Kremlin a margin of nuclear superiority and so remove any incentive for it to negotiate on his proposal for mutual reduction of nuclear arms.

But supporters of the freeze said that it was needed to halt a dangerously escalating United States-Soviet nuclear arms race. Nuclear reduction should follow later, they said.

The resolution says that the objective of talks between the two countries should be first “an immediate, mutual and verifiable” nuclear freeze and then negotiation of nuclear reductions.

Mr Reagan’s supporters won, by a 221-203 vote, an amendment which said that the reductions were “to be achieved within a reasonable specified period of time as determined by negotiators.” Supporters of the freeze

said, and the Reagan backers agreed, that it would abrogate the freeze if the reductions could not be achieved in the time set by the negotiators. The resolution was passed in response to a mass freeze movement that emerged in the United-States early last year. It began in Europe in 1979 after N.A.T.O. decided to deploy American cruise and Pershing 2 nuclear missiles in Europe unless Moscow substantially reduced similar missiles there. The House vote came a day after American Catholic bishops voted 238-9 in favour of a pastoral letter calling for a halt to the nuclear arms race.

The bishops defied the Reagan Administration’s efforts to get them to seek a “curb” to the nuclear arms race and opted instead for an outright call for a halt in testing, production, and deployment of any new nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Mr Reagan said that the United States would seriously consider (the Soviet leader) Yuri Andropov’s new proposal that nuclear warheads, as well as missiles, be counted in

European. arms control talks. Mr Reagan, while saying that Mr Andropov’s offer was positive, said that the sincerity of the Soviet Union would be determined only when talks on mediumrange nuclear missiles resumed in Geneva on May 17.

A Quaker group yesterday endorsed the Bishops’ pastoral letter. Jim Lenhart, the spokesman for the American Friends Services Committee, in Philadelphia, said that the Quaker group was “delighted with, and strongly endorses, the Catholic bishops’ statement on nuclear weapons.” “We support not only what they’re saying, but the reasons for the statement — that they are called to be peacemakers for religious reasons.

“This is the saipe position that the American Friends Services and Quakers in general are called to be, as well. We can solidly unite with the bishops not only for what they said, but for the reasons for taking this stand.” The American Friends Services Committee represents a variety of American Quaker groups.