BAN ON TESTS OF H-BOMB

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28260, 24 April 1957, Page 13

BAN ON TESTS OF H-BOMB

No U.S. Support For Japan

(Rec. 11 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 23. The Secretary of State (Mr Dulles) was reported ready today to reaffirm United States determination to pursue tests of new nuclear weapons.

Usually well-informed sources said that Mr Dulles would enter his press conference this morning prepared to answer questions about his week-end talks with Dr. Masatoshi Matsushita, the special Japanese envoy who came to Washington to ask the United States for help in abolishing all nuclear weapons testing. The sources said Mr Dulles would probably make it clear that the United States would not answer the Japanese plea for intercession with Britain to stop the tests of British hydrogen weapons in the Pacific. Dr. Matsushita yesterday went to Chicago to seek-the backing of Mr Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, in his campaign against nuclear weapons tests. After conferring with the Japanese envoy, Mr Stevenson issued a statement renewing his 1956 campaign plea that steps be taken to control the testing of large nuclear bombs. Official sources in Washington said that Dr. Matsushita had been told there that the attitude of the United States towards nuclear weapons testing still rested on three basic tenets:

That the United States would be prepared to stop nuclear weapons testing only as part of a universal disarmament arrangement, with binding obligations on the Soviet Union and other nations. Pending such a universal agree- . ment, the United States felt obliged, as the free-world leader, to continue testing and experimenting in its search for < refined, or perfected, nuclear weapons. In carrying out these tests, the ‘ United States would be scrupulous in taking every ■ possible precaution to limit ’ harmful effects, and to make sure those effects were kept , to a confined, area. Washington circles believed that : Britain would be guided by ; the same principle? in its ; Christmas Island tests.