Soviet arms plan ‘a step’
NZPA-Reuter Stockholm France and West Germany have expressed interest in a proposal by the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, for radical nuclear weapons cuts. The French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, said it was a “step in the right direction.”
Speaking at the opening yesterday of the ninth session of the Stockholm Conference on Disarmament in Europe, Mr Dumas said Mr Gorbachev’s proposal had aroused interest. But he warned that many conditions still had to be met before France would join the nuclear disarmament process.
The West German Foreign Minister, HansDietrich Genscher, said Bonn was studying the proposals with its N.A.T.O. allies. “Constructive new elements will be met with constructive responses,” he said.
Mr Gorbachev’s proposals, unveiled on January 15, outlined a timetable for the scrapping of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000, including those held by countries other than the two superpowers.
Mr Genscher singled out the Soviet leader’s
offer of verification arrangements as worthy of special attention. “The fact that the Soviet Union is now prepared to accept strict controls, including international on-site inspections within the framework of a universal convention banning the use of chemical weapons, is also of fundamental importance for multilateral arms control negotiations,” Mr Genscher said. Mr Dumas said that Mr
Gorbachev’s proposal was encouraging, but that conventional and chemical weapons were also a threat.
“For us Europeans, the limitation of nuclear armaments cannot be put forward as sufficient in itself. Security, in all its constituent parts, must be our criterion,” he said. Mr Dumas said France’s preconditions for joining nuclear disarmament talks were unchanged. They were: substantial cuts in the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals, agreement that defensive systems would not be strengthened, the elimination of imbalances in conventional weapons and a ban on chemical weapons.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19860130.2.56.7
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Press, 30 January 1986, Page 8
Word count
Tapeke kupu
295Soviet arms plan ‘a step’ Press, 30 January 1986, Page 8
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Press. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Copyright in all Footrot Flats cartoons is owned by Diogenes Designs Ltd. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise these cartoons and make them available online as part of this digitised version of the Press. You can search, browse, and print Footrot Flats cartoons for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Diogenes Designs Ltd for any other use.
Acknowledgements
Ngā mihi
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Christchurch City Libraries.