MAY BE INVITED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21933, 30 January 1946, Page 5

MAY BE INVITED

UNO COMMISSION TESTS IN MARSHALLS PRESIDENT APPROVES (11 am.) WASHINGTON, Jan. 29. The Secretary of State, Mr. James Byrnes, announced that President Truman had approved his proposal to invite members of the United Nations Organisation Atomic Energy Commission to witness the atomic bomb tests in the Pacific. He emphasised that even with President Truman s approval, however, the proposal thus far should not be construed as the final Government policy on the subject. The Associated Press says if the recommendation is finally adopted, _it would mean that officials from Britain, Russia, China, France, Australia, Canada, Poland, Yugoslavia, Holland, Brazil and Egypt would witness the experiments. World’s Right to Attend

Commenting on the suggestion that no foreign observers should be permitted to witness the atom bomb tests at Bikini atoll, the New York Herald Tribune, in a leading article, said: “It leaves one with a feeling of surprise that anv question should have been raised as to inviting the representatives of the other United Nations. “Whatever one may feel about the policy of secrecy concerning the manufacture and discharge of the atom bomb, there can be no conceivable reason for not exhibiting the results to all who will look, understand and take warning for the future. Even if the bomb should prove less devastating than expected, the world should still know it and know it through reports from, their own observers rather than simply through American statements. “With this bomb, we introduced a socio-political explosive of the most perilous kind into our international system. It will not be easy, at best, to control it, but it will be quite impossible unless everyone at least knows and understands exactly what we are all really confronted with.”

Civilian Control Urged V Military men should be excluded fgom the policy-making functions of the proposed United Nations’ Commission to control atomic energy, said Dr. Harrison Davies, representing the Federation of Atomic Scientists. Dr. Davies recommended that the atom bomb project should be transferred promptly from the army, to civilian control because too many scientists were leaving the project, due to uncertain policy, and because they feared that continued military control would have an adverse effect, abroad.