U.N. Assembly Gives Atomic Question First Priority

Grey River Argus, 1 October 1948, Page 5

U.N. Assembly Gives Atomic Question First Priority

PARIS, September 29

The United Nations Political Committee has placed the Atomic Energy Committee’s report first on the agenda. It did so in spite of strong Russian opposition. The second agenda item will be the Russian proposals to ban atomic weapons and a reduction in the Big Five’s armaments. The third item will be Count Bernadotte’s Palestine report. The Soviet delegate, M. Jakob Malik, urged that first consideration should be given Russia’s disarmament proposals, and said these were a basis of world peace. They represented a constructive attempt to rid the world of the fear of war. He insisted that the Atomic Energy Commission had reached a complete dead-end. Mr. Hector McNeil (Britain) said M. Vyshinsky would say that some indefinite fractional disarmament was more important than atomic energy. “It is ingenious, if not dishonest, to suggest that apparent arithmetical disarmament is more vital to the world’s future than to reach an agreement on atomic energy and atomic weapons. If we can reach agreement on atomic energy, then everything else will fall into place,” he said.

Britain moved to make the Palestine crisis first item on the agenda, nut the Arab-led bloc defeated the motion by 21 to 16 votes.