URGE FOR DISARMAMENT

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 31 January 1933, Page 5

URGE FOR DISARMAMENT

DISCUSSION BY POWERS PROPOSALS OF BRITAIN FIVE GENERAL PRINCIPLES, (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Jan. 28. It is hoped the Powers’ replies to the Birtish proposals for the Disarmament Conference will be received in time to enable the Britsh suggestions to be considered by the bureau of the conference next week. It is suggested that the discussion be divided into the two, main heads of political questions which have a bearing on security, and purely disarmament questions. Political questions cover general principles and it is suggested it should be the aim of -the bureau to submit to the general committee, which is to meet on February 2 a convention giving effect to them. These general principles are:—(1) Affirmation by European powers that they will in no case resort to force.

(2) Continental European States should seek to work out regional security agreements.

i(3) Application of the principle that limitations on the armaments of defeated .States be contained in the same disarmament convention as that which defines the limitations on the armaments of others and shall replace part five of the Treaty of Versailles, which limits Germany’s arms and armed forces.

(4)i The convention is to last for the same period and be subject to the same measure of revision to all signatories. (o) The embodiment, in the convention as regards war material of the principle of qualitative and the provision for the realisation of such equality, if not immediately after its entry into force, then by specified States. Continental States should consider the reduction of their armies to uniform short service.