ATOMIC BOMB NOT TO BE GIVEN AWAY BY USA

Grey River Argus, 20 October 1948, Page 5

ATOMIC BOMB NOT TO BE GIVEN AWAY BY USA

Proposal for Negotiations Among Big Powers PARIS, October. 18. The United States does not intend to give up its atomic weapons, except under a system of control sufficiently effective to guarantee that other nations do not have and cannot secure these weapons. The United States representative, Mr Warren Austin, made this clear to the Political Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations to-day, when the committee began its discussion of the sub-committee’s failure to find a compromise resolution that would combine the Eastern and Western proposals for control of the atomic bomb.

Mr Austin demanded that the United Nations should turn the deadlocked atomic problem over to the Big Five Powers and Canada for direct negotiation. He said that the United Nations could go no further in its efforts to control atomic energy until the Soviet agreed to participate in the world community on a cooperative basis. Mr Austin said the United States could not agree to scrap the 30 months’ work of the Atomic Energy Commission, which provided for the setting up of complete control by stages with the destruction of the existing stock piles to take place at an appropriate stage. “Our plan will no doubt further increase the suspicions-of the Soviet Powers as to our motives”, he added. “The motive they seem unable to understand is our desire to live in a world where individual human beings, as well as independent nations, great and small, have the greatest possible liberty and freedom consonant with the liberty and freedom of others. In the held of atomic energy no effective control is possible, except in such a world”. M. Manuilsky (Ukraine) said the Canadian resolution would sirm>v sanction an atomic arms race. “We are conscious that atomic energy is no longer a secret and that countries are working on it”, he added “The small countries, however, could not have the vast organisation necessary for the production oi atomic weapons”. The committee adjourned until tomorrow without taking a vote.