Warsaw Pact calls for non-aggression talks

Press, 9 May 1984, Page 10

Warsaw Pact calls for non-aggression talks

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Warsaw Pact has urged N.A.T.O. to open a new round of disarmament talks which would draw up an East-West non-aggres-sion treaty. In a message passed to N.A.T.O. ambassadors in Budapest yesterday the Pact States called on Western governments to take the proposal seriously and either agree to talks on the basic aims of such an accord or move straight on to drafting it. The Pact States first called for a treaty ruling out the use of conventional or nuclear weapons in January last year. But the new message was the first time that it had called for talks to begin or given details of the kind of accord the Pact leaders have in mind.

Western States have already rejected the idea of a non-aggression treaty, saying that it is too vague and of less value than detailed technical arms limitation agreements. In an initial reaction to the move Western diplomats in Moscow said that they considered it had little chance of a warm reception . from N.A.T.O. States. The diplomats said that they believed the proposal, which was clearly timed for the resumption of the European disarmament conference in Stockholm today, had been intended to divert the meeting into a channel more acceptable to Moscow. The Soviet Union has already called for discussion of the non-aggression treaty in Stockholm and rejected

Western proposals calling for tighter controls on military exercises conducted by both sides. It has said that these suggestion, which call for foreign observers to be invited to all manoeuvres, are an attempt at veiled espionage. The message sent to the N.A.T.O. member-States said that the proposed treaty should commit all signatories, “not to be the first to use against each other either nuclear or conventional arms, and, consequently, not to use military force in general.” But Western diplomats said that they believed the latest proposal was a sign that Moscow would refuse to negotiate on the Western suggestions already tabled at the first session of the Stockholm conference earlier this year.