Moscow calls again for test pause

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 6

Moscow calls again for test pause

NZPA-AP Moscow The Soviet news media and officials yesterday stepped up pressure on Washington to agree to a ban on nuclear tests before the New Year as a way to realise hopes raised at the Geneva summit meeting. The Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, criticised United States behaviour since the summit meeting. He singled out the Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, for talking recently in a language different from that of the Geneva meeting. He accused Washington of a destructive approach to arms control questions. “They in Washington have not taken a single practical step in the sphere of security that would be in keeping with the essence of the Geneva arrangements,” he said.

Similar accusations have been made several times in the last week in the Staterun news media. But Mr Shevardnadze’s speech was the first one by a top

official who attended the November 19-20 Geneva meeting to criticise the United States.

The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, announced during the year that Moscow would halt nuclear testing from August 6, the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bomb explosion that destroyed Hiroshima, until January 1.

He said that the ban could be extended if the United States also agreed to halt nuclear tests. But the President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, said then that the United States explosion programme was needed to perform tests that he said the Soviets had already done.

Mr Reagan invited Soviet observers to the Nevada nuclear test-site as a confid-ence-building measure, but Moscow did not accept.