H-BOMB TESTS IN PACIFIC

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27396, 8 July 1954, Page 11

H-BOMB TESTS IN PACIFIC

Soviet Requests U.N. Prohibition NEW YORK, July 7. The Soviet Union called on the United Nations last night to order the United States to halt hydrogenbomb and atom-bomb tests in Pacific Isle trusteeship areas. The Soviet Union deposited a draft resolution with the United Nations Trusteeship Council’s standing committee on petitions, charging that the bomb tests were a violation of the United States trustee agreement with the United Nations. The resolution was submitted to support an expected Soviet Union attack when the committee later this week takes up petitions from inhabitants of the Marshall Islands.

The petitions asked that either experiments cease in the area or that the United States improve its warning system to island inhabitants when new super-weapons were unleashed. Some islanders were burned early this year by radioactive ash in experiments that apparantly overflowed foreseen limits.

The resolution, charging that irreparable damage had been done, insisted that the United States should pay heavy damages and should make sure that the islanders were returned their lands used in the bomb tests. Council sources said that the United States had fulfilled all its trusteeship administration obligations by serving notice in April, 1953, that it intended to conduct bomb tests in the Marshall Islands area, and that the Soviet Union made no objection then.