Attacks ‘less likely’ in nuclear-free zones

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 8

Attacks ‘less likely’ in nuclear-free zones

The Soviet Union is far less likely to use nuclear weapons against nuclearfree ■ countries than against countries harbouring nuclear facilities, according to the secretary of the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Committee, Mr Larry Ross.

He was responding to recent comments by the chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Richard Lugar. During his visit to New Zealand, Senator Lugar said that Russian missiles were aimed at New Zealand and denied that this statement was “scaremongering or inflationary.” Mr Ross said yesterday that countries with United States’ nuclear bases had openly said that they expected to be targeted by the Soviet Union in any nuclear exchange. “It is in the Soviets’

interests to try to destroy the enemy’s nuclear arsenal and facilities first before it strikes relatively harmless countries,” Mr Ross said. “Senataor Lugar claims that the nuclear deterrent is the only reason that there has been 40 years of peace since World War 11. “Since Carter’s presidency in the 19705, the United States defence policy has changed from one of deterrence to "counter force” with a potential for first strike. “That means that both the Soviet Union and the United States believe they could issue a decapitating first-strike blow and not incur too great a nuclear retaliation from the enemy,” Mr Ross said. The adoption of a defence policy with a firststrike capacity by the United States had sharply increased the risk of nuclear war either inten-

tionally or accidentally, he said. Expanding nuclear-free zones could take countries of both the Soviet and United States alliance blocks out of the nuclear infrastructure and off the prime-targeting lists of the super-Powers, Mr Ross said. “The encouragement of nuclear-free zones has been approved by most countries, including the United States, as an important arms control step. A non-nuclear defence for New Zealand coupled with peacemaking neutrality could make this country the Geneva of the South Pacific,” Mr Ross said.