Disarmament: The Acid Test

In Geneva’s Palais des Nations last week, representatives of the U.S., Britain and Russia sat down after a three-month recess to pursue once again the nuclear test ban that has eluded them throughout some three years and 273 frustrating sessions. As the 274th session began, Western negotiators were in a mood to make every reasonable concession as a final, acid test of the sincerity of Russia’s loudly avowed desire to end all explosions of nuclear weapons.

President Kennedy’s choice for the new U.S. spokesman at Geneva was Arthur Hobson Dean, 62, once John Foster Dulles’ law partner. A cherubic-looking fellow. Dean earned his negotiator’s credentials the hard way, representing the U.S. in the interminable Korean war truce talks with the Chinese Communists. In his briefcase, Dean carried a whole sheaf of new Western proposals, jointly tailored by the Kennedy Administration and the British government to eliminate the most serious Soviet objections to previous Western plans. “Our proposals,” said British Negotiator David Ormsby-Gore, “should now make agreement possible before the end of June.”

The Chairman Recognizes . . . Before Dean could open his briefcase, Russia’s Semyon (“Scratchy”) Tsarapkin, taking advantage of his position as conference chairman for the day, proceeded to deliver a blistering “historical review” of the test-ban talks to date. He chided Britain and the U.S. for “allowing” France to continue nuclear tests, and coolly reneged on Russia’s previous agreement to accept a single neutral scientific administrator to head whatever test-ban system might be established. Now, he said, Russia wants a directorate composed of one Communist, one Westerner and one neutral.

After this, Westerners saw little to be optimistic about. Dean’s only answer to Tsarapkin was to begin outlining the new Western plan. The West, he said, was now willing to let the Russians inspect any nuclear devices set off experimentally underground in the effort to work out an unbeatable detection system. The two Western powers were also prepared to extend the moratorium on underground testing to three years, to accept 19 rather than 21 control posts in Russia, and to agree to full inspection of any nuclear devices used industrially. The one point on which the West would not compromise : inspection and control must be real.

The Transmitter. “Interesting,” said Tsarapkin. promising to.transmit the proposals to Moscow. Izvestia curtly dismissed the new Western plan as merely a “repetition” of positions “whose unacceptability the Soviet government and its representatives have exposed more than once.” The outlook: little hope of any test-ban agreement.