LETTER TO THE HONORABLE WILLIAM J. CASEY FROM EUGENE ROSTOW REGARDING THE TRUE FAITH IS MAKING PROGRESS
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xoCUtiV-
UNITED STATES ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY
OFFICE OF
THE DIRECTOR
November 1, 1982
Dear Bill,
The true faith is making progress, as
you will see in the enclosed. Now all that
remains is a small matter of detail - to con-
vert it into policy.
Your sincerely,
Enclosure:
UN Speech of Oct. 27, 1982
The Honorable
William J. Casey,
Director,
Central Intelligence Agency.
State Dept. review completed
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--w 7T
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STATEMENT
BY
THE HONORABLE EUGENE V. ROSTOW
UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE
TO THE 37th SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
IN THE FIRST COMMITTEE
OCTOBER 27, 1982
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ARMS CONTROL BUTLETIN
U.S. ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY. WASHINGTON, D.C.. 20451
STATEMENT
BY
THE HONORABLE EUGENE V. ROSTOW
UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE
TO THE 37th SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
IN THE FIRST COMMITTEE
OCTOBER 27, 1982
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Mr. Chairman:
The United States Delegation is gratified to welcome
you, Ambassador Gbeho, as Chairman of this important
Committee. We congratulate you warmly on your election.
I wish, as well, to congratulate the Vice Chairmen and the
Rapporteur. It is a pleasure also to congratulate
Ambassadors Alva Myrdal and Alfonso Garcia-Robles, the
recipients of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. We and the two
laureates share a common, fundamental objective -- a peaceful
world. We have not always agreed as to the best means of
attaining this objective, but we have always respected their
devotion and their views.
It is an honor for me again to present the views of my
government on the issues before the First Committee.
I start with a proposition some may find paradoxical --
the.thesis that the last year has been one of singular
achievement in the quest for peace. You may well ask how we can
claim progress towards peace for a year during which there were so
many acts of aggression and so many stormy exercises of the
inherent right of self-defense protected by Article 51 of our
Charter; a year which witnessed so many episodes of frustration
and failure in the functioning of the Security Council and other
systems of collective security.
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We make this paradoxical assertion because the climate
of world opinion on the vital questions of war and peace
has changed profoundly during the year, in response to the
impact of events and the leadership of many who have spoken
before the Security Council, the General Assembly, and this
Committee. In this connection I refer particularly to a number
of important statements made at the Second UN General
Assembly Special Session on Disarmament, and to the Secretary
General's significant and forward-looking Report to the General
Assembly of 7 September 1982, A/37/1, and his fine statement
before this Committee on 26 October 1982.
During the last year there has been a mutation in the
way the people of the world perceive what is happening. They'
have come to realize that the Secretary General is right in
pointing out that "we are embarked on an exceedingly dangerous
course", which he characterizes as "perilously near to a new
international anarchy". He reminds us that the failure of the
League of Nations to develop an effective system of collective
security was a major cause of the Second World War, and that
we are moving along the same path again. "Governments that
believe they can win an international objective by force are
often quite ready to do so," he writes, "and domestic opinion
not infrequently applauds.such a course. The Security Council,
the primary organ of the United Nations for the maintenance of
international peace and security, all too often finds itself
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C
unable to take a decisive action to resolve international
conflicts and its resolutions are increasingly defied or
ignored by those who feel themselves strong enough to do'so."
The Secretary General reminds us that "our Charter was born
of six. years of global agony and destruction. I sometimes
feel," he writes, "that we now take the Charter far less
seriously than did its authors, living as they did in the wake
of a world tragedy. I believe, therefore, that an important
first step would be a conscious recommitment by governments
to the Charter."
The Government of the United States supports the thrust of
the Secretary General's analysis and of his prescriptions for
improving the effectiveness of the peace-keeping institutions
of the United Nations. As President Reagan said before the
General Assembly on June 17 of this year:
"I have come to this hall to call for inter-
national recommitment to the basic tenet of the
UN Charter that all members practice tolerance
and live together in peace as good neighbors
under the rule of law, forsaking armed force as
a means of settling disputes between nations.
We ask you to reinforce the bilateral and
multilateral arms control negotiations between
members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and to
rededicate yourselves to.maintaining inter-
national peace and security, and removing
threats to peace.
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"We who have signed the UN Charter have pledged
to refrain from the threat or use of force
against the territory or independence of any
state. In these times when more and more
lawless acts are going unpunished -- as some
members of this very body show a growing
disregard for the UN Charter -- the peace-
loving nations of the world must condemn
aggression and pledge again to act in a way
that is worthy of the ideals that we have
endorsed. Let us finally make the Charter
live."
"A conscious recommitment" to the principles of the
Charter cannot in our view be achieved merely by passing
resolutions, however' worthy. Simple resolutions endorsing
the Secretary General's recommendations could be of utility.
But what is needed now, far more than resolutions, is the
will to enforce the Charter as it is. The Charter is a docu-
ment of constitutional character. Its commandments do not need
clarification; they need to be obeyed. Resolutions attempt-
ing to restate or amplify the key provisions of the Charter
might well dilute their authority. As I was privileged to
point out in this Committee on October 21, 1981, "unless we
restore general and reciprocal respect for the principles of
Article 2(4) of the Charter, the slide towards anarchy will
engulf us all". To make the Charter effective, I said then,
will not be a simple matter to be settled on the cheap, and
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without tears. It will require effective steps to see to
it that the Charter, the arms control treaties and the legally
binding decisions of the Security Council are carried out
and that we can verify compliance with their terms.
The first step back from the edge of the abyss is to
achieve a change in the minds of men. That change -- the
change that must precede effective action -- has begun to
happen. Necessarily, the focus of that process must be a
crusade to mobilize support for the Secretary General's thesis
that we must do more than condemn aggression; we must actually
-- and actively -- enforce the rules of the Charter against it.
As the Secretary General points out, we must undertake to deter
aggression; to seek peaceful solutions for crises in their
incipiency; and to defeat aggression if, despite all precau-
tions, it should occur. Conventional war has gravely wounded,
civilization many times during this turbulent century; in a
nuclear environment, the impact of conventional force aggres-
sion could well become unthinkable.
The Secretary General's Report and the statements of
many leaders which preceded it dispel a series of illusions
which have done a great deal of harm in recent years. Those
fallacies and illusions are all associated with the view,
frequently put forward by the Soviet Union, that peace is
threatened primarily by an "arms race", and that peace can
be attained by arms control agreements even though Article
2(4) of the Charter is allowed to wither away. This familiar
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error puts the cart before the horse. As Prime Minister
Thatcher said last summer during the Second Special Session on
Disarmament, "It is not merely a mistaken analysis but an
evasion of responsibility to suppose that we can prevent the
horrors of war by focussing on its instruments. They are more
often symptoms rather than causes." For too many people, the
complex rituals of arms control diplomacy have become a con-
venient escape from the central problem -- the decline in the
influence of the Charter on the behavior of States, and the
'fear to which this trend has given rise throughout the world.
Arms control agreements can be useful in reinforcing a regime
of peace; they can never be a substitute for the harsh and
unremitting effort to sustain peace directly. This is the
sobering and important lesson of the First and Second Special
Sessions of the General Assembly on Disarmament: that arms
control agreements can be of value only if they are conceived,
planned, and carried out as part of an overall strategy for
establishing and maintaining peace.
II.
Mr. Chairman, the United States has set into motion
during the last year a dynamic program of initiatives in the
field of arms control and disarmament. In each case these
new initiatives are based on a thorough review and evaluation
of the past history of the subject, and dominated by the
proposition that arms control and disarmament efforts are
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an integral part of foreign and security policy. In his
speech of November 18, 1981, President Reagan outlined our
approach to four important items on the agenda -- the
negotiations between the United States and. the Soviet
Union on intermediate-range nuclear weapons, known as INF,
and those on strategic nuclear arms reductions, known as
START; the negotiations on mutual and balanced reductions
of conventional forces in Europe, generally called the
MBFR talks; and the continuing process of discussion'and
negotiation stemming from the Final Act of the Helsinki
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In
addition, the United States has revised and revitalized
its unilateral and multilateral programs for preventing
the proliferation of nuclear weapons; eliminating the
menace of chemical weapons; studying the feasibility of
imposing further limits on the military use of outer
space; and developing new and more effective measures
to assure confidence and minimize the risks of war by
miscalculation.
I shall now comment briefly on each of these
aspects of the arms control program of the United States.
The place to begin, manifestly, is with the bilateral
negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States
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on the reduction of nuclear arms through verifiable
agreements which strengthen security and help to make
stability possible. The outcome of these negotiations
will affect the prospects for many other arms control
efforts and, indeed, the prospects for peace itself.
Success in the effort to curb and confine the nuclear
weapon is indispensable to the possibility of peace.
Under present circumstances nuclear arms agreements must
be shaped by the principle that nuclear arsenals can be
justified only if they are confined to the function of
deterring aggression. To put the proposition another way,
useful and constructive nuclear arms agreements presuppose
that the Soviet Union commit itself to obey the rules of
world public order embodied in the Charter, as the
Secretary General has recommended.
It is the view of the United States Government
that achieving true nuclear parity between the Soviet
Union and the United States on the foundation of the
principle I have just stated is the most important challenge
before us in the field of arms control. We must reduce
our dependence on these dangerous weapons. We must seek a
more stable balance at lower levels of armament. The
present situation is unacceptable to us.
How did the present situation arise? The answer is as
regrettable as it is simple. It arose as a result of the
expansionist foreign policy of the Soviet Union and the arms
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build-up on which it is based -- an unprecedented increase
of both conventional and nuclear military forces sustained
over a period of more than 25 years. During that period, the
Soviet Union claimed immunity from the Charter rules against
agression, and the rest of the world tacitly accepted its.
claim. That course is no longer tolerable. The process of
Soviet expansion and the menace of the Soviet Union's growing
military power have come to threaten the foundation of the
state system. That system cannot continue to accept the Soviet
practice of aggression through the use of its own forces and
those of its proxies and satellites, whether organized as
armies, guerrillas, armed bands, or terrorists, backed by the
implicit threat of its growing nuclear forces. During the
1970s, a period when the United States nuclear arsenal was
held relatively stable, the Soviet Union expanded both its
intermediate range and intercontinental nuclear forces far
beyond any conceivable requirements of deterrence and defense.
The size, scale and structure of the Soviet nuclear
arsenal; its steady growth; and, above all, its emphasis
on intermediate range and intercontinental ground based
ballistic missiles are the source of the nuclear anxiety
which haunts the world. Ground based ballistic missiles
are swifter, more accurate, and more destructive than
other nuclear weapons, and far less vulnerable to defenses.
The Soviet advantage in this category of nuclear weapons
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creates the potentiality for a disarming first strike. And
the consciousness of that possibility is gener.ating currents
of fear which have great political importance throughout
the world.
The purpose of the American nuclear arsenal is to
deter aggression against the supreme interests of the
United States. The implacable growth of the Soviet nuclear
arsenal suggests that the Soviet Union looks upon nuclear
weapons as instruments of intimidation and coercion
precisely because such weapons, if they are sufficiently
numerous, create the capacity to execute a preemptive
first strike. This is why the Soviet advantage in ground
based ballistic missiles is politically destabilizing.
Anc' this is why the first objective of the United States
in the field of nuclear arms policy is to eliminate
this factor of instability in world politics, preferably
by reasonable INF and START agreements, but by force
modernization if necessary.
The START and INF negotiations must be viewed
together, because the weapons with which they deal are
closely related. Intercontinental weapons can, after all,
be fired from the Soviet Union not only against New York or
Washington, but against targets in Europe, Japan, or other
places vital to the security of the United States and its
allies as well.
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The INF talks have now been going on for 11 months.
They have been conducted in a business-like and professional
atmosphere. Much progress has been achieved by the two
delegations in sorting out what is important to each side,
and illuminating the way to possible solutions. It is clear
that a potentiality exists for accommodating the analytic
concepts used by both sides. What is not yet clear is-whether
the Soviet Union is willing to accept an agreement based
exclusively on the principle of deterrence.
In INF, the United States has proposed the complete
elimination of an important class of nuclear weapons on
both sides; the Soviet Union, in response, urges the
elimination only of the United States weapons of
comparable military significance. Under the Soviet
proposal, the Soviet Union would be permitted to have-up
to 300 launchers for its mobile SS-20 systems in the
European part of the Soviet Union, and an unlimited number
in the Far Eastern portion of that country, while the United
States would be forbidden to deploy any equivalent systems
in the European area. The Soviet Union also proposes a
moratorium for the duration of the negotiations -- a feature
of its plan designed to preserve the Soviet advantage
in ground based ballistic missiles, and to remove any Soviet
incentive for agreeing to serious reductions in the most de-
stabilizing class of weapons.
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The Soviet Union defends its proposal by contending
that there is in fact a balance at the moment in inter-
mediate range nuclear weapons in and near Europe, at least,
and that the deployments planned by NATO would disturb that
balance. The Soviet negotiators achieve this remarkable feat
of arithmetic by counting all British and French nuclear
weapons with the American forces; treating American bombers,
submarine-launched missiles, and cruise missiles as equivalent
to the SS-20; counting all American weapons as relevant, includ-
ing American dual purpose aircraft located in the United
States; and excluding many categories of the Soviet arsenal.
The Soviet Union has so far refused to negotiate about its
mobile intermediate range ballistic missiles in the Far East;
the United States, to the contrary, insists that the negotia-
tions must deal with all such Soviet and American weapons,
wherever they are located. After all, the world is round,
and nothing can be gained by exporting a security problem
from Europe to Asia.
On October 21, 1982, President Brezhnev commented,
according to TASS, that the INF talks were making "difficult
progress", and that "these difficulties are rooted in the
unwillingness of the United States to reach agreement . . .
on the basis of the principle of equality and equal security".
The United States notes with interest President Brezhnev's
statement that the INF talks are making progress. As I re-
marked a few moments ago, the United States agrees with
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President Brezhnev's assessment in the sense that the
negotiating process is clarifying the concepts used by both
sides, and revealing patterns of possible congruence in their
positions. Furthermore, we welcome the fact that both sides
accept the principle of equality as the basis for a fair
agreement.
But we cannot agree with President Brezhnev that the
present position of the Soviet Union in the INF talks is
one based on the principle of equality.
The American concept of equality is defined with precision
-- zero on both sides for the most destabilizing intermediate
range ground based missiles.
The Soviet Union, however, uses at least four quite
different definitions of equality simultaneously -- equal
reductions on the part of the Soviet Union and the United
States; an equal level of force, measured in packages of
weapons of different destructive capacities, sometimes between
the Soviet Union and the United States, sometimes beteen the
Soviet Union and NATO. Most often, the Soviet Union uses
the term "equal security" to mean that the world must acknow-
ledge its claim of a right to possess a nuclear arsenal equal
to the sum of all the other nuclear arsenals in the world.
This is a claim for hegemony, not equality. The nuclear
arsenals of Great Britain, France, and China exist to protect
the ultimate sovereignty of those nations. They are not under
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American control and they are entirely defensive in character:
given their size, they could not be used for any conceivable
act of aggression against the Soviet Union. There is no basis,
therefore, for the claim that such arsenals have any role in
bilateral negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United
States. Sometimes representatives of the Soviet Union say
that "the mutual security of the Soviet Union and the United
States is indivisible". This is a suggestive formulation of
the problem of defining equality. Thus far, at any rate, it
turns out to be as elusive as the others.
Achieving equality between the Soviet Union and the
United States on the basis of the principle of deterrence,
with primary but.not exclusive emphasis on equality in the
most destabilizing categories of weapons, would in itself
be a major political event, and a step of genuine importance
in the quest for peace.
The Soviet-American talks on intercontinental nuclear
weapons are, of course, at an earlier stage than the INF
talks. Their atmosphere is also serious and business-like.
The United States position was outlined in President
Reagan's speech at Eureka College on May 9, 1982. Its essen-
tial idea is that of equal ceilings at much lower levels
of force -- ceilings that would strengthen deterrence and
promote stability by significantly reducing the Soviet lead
in ICBMs. Coupled with the elimination of the existing
intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as proposed in the
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INF talks, such a result would enable the United States to
maintain an overall level of strategic nuclear capability
sufficient to deter conflict, safeguard our national security,
and meet our commitments to allies and friends.
To achieve this goal, the President announced a practical,
phased approach to the negotiation, like the procedure being
used in the INF talks. It is based on the principle that
the two arsenals should be equal both in the number of weapons
and in their destructive capacity. "The focus of our efforts,"
the President said, "will be to reduce significantly the most
destabilizing systems -- ballistic missiles, the number of
warheads they carry and their overall destructive potential."
While no aspect of.the problem is excluded from consideration,
and the United States will negotiate in good faith on any
.topics the Soviets wish to raise, the United States proposes
that the first topic to be considered in the negotiations
should be the reduction of ballistic missile warheads to
equal levels at least one-third below current numbers. Both
ground-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles are
included in this proposal. No more than half these warheads
would be deployed on land-based missiles. This provision alone
should achieve substantial reductions in missile throw-weight,
a reliable measure of the destructive power of nuclear weapons.
In a second phase, closely linked to the first,
we will seek equal ceilings on other elements of United
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States and Soviet strategic forces, including equal limits
on ballistic missile throw-weight at less than current U.S.
levels.
In both START and INF the United States has made it
clear that verification measures capable of assuring compli-
ance are indispensable. For those provisions that cannot
be monitored effectively by national technical means of verifi-
cation, we will be proposing cooperative measures, data exchanges,
and collateral constraints that should provide the necessary
confidence in compliance. The Soviet Union has indicated
that it will be prepared where necessary to consider cooperative
measures going beyond national technical means. This is
an encouraging sign. Without satisfactory verification provi-
sions, meaningful agreements will be impossible to achieve.
The Soviet Union has attacked our START proposals as
unfair, on the grounds that they call for unequal reductions --
indeed, that they call for "unilateral Soviet disarmament".
This is not the case. Each side now has approximately 7500
ballistic missile warheads. Under the American proposal, each
side would have to reduce to no more than 5000, of which no
more than 2500 could be on ICBMs. True, the Soviet Union would
have to dismantle more ICBMs to comply with the ICBM sub-
limit, while we might have to dismantle more submarine-based
missiles. But that is the point. There is nothing inequitable
about an equal ceiling which strengthens deterrence and stability.
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The Soviet position in START, as Soviet spokesmen have
made clear in public statements, consists of two parts, a
proposal for a moratorium, and a series of reductions and
restrictions on modernization which would result in preserving
the present Soviet advantage in heavy, accurate, swift, and
extremely destructive ground-based missiles. The Soviet
Union seems to treat "stability" as a quantitative, not a
qualitative problem; its proposal offers no incentives to move
away from destabilizing systems, and it would not lead to
substantial reductions in the key indicators of destructive
potential.
If the INF and START talks are successful, the huge
Soviet advantage in ground-based ballistic missiles will
be eliminated. These alone are the weapons which "defy deter-
rence". In addition, it would eliminate the menacing Soviet
lead in throw-weight, which is equally important. If the
Soviet Union accepts nuclear arms control agreements based on
the principle of "deterrence only", which is the heart of our
negotiating position, a Soviet first strike would be im-
possible. Then -- but only then -- nuclear tension would diminish.
In President Reagan's statement on arms control of
November 18, 1981, he spoke of the importance which we attach
to progress in the Vienna negotiations on mutual and balanced
force reductions in Europe -- the so-called MBFR negotiations.
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As all of you know, these negotiations, underway for
almost a decade, have been bogged down primarily as a
result of Soviet intransigence over acknowledging
exactly how many Warsaw Pact forces there are in the
area of reductions to be covered by a treaty. The
Soviet view applies the principle of caveat emptor
with a vengeance. Meaningful progress toward the
established goal of reductions to equal levels is
hardly possible if we cannot agree on the number of
forces now deployed by each side -- the basis
needed to negotiate the reductions. Unless both
sides are satisfied about the adequacy of the data
used in the negotiation, it is hard to imagine how
an atmosphere of trust can be expected to develop.
The West has taken a new initiative in moving
the MBFR negotiations forward. In July the West
formally tabled a draft MBFR treaty, embodying a
new, comprehensive proposal designed to give
renewed momentum to the negotiations. The new
proposal highlights the primary Western objective
in these negotiations, which is the lowering of
tensions in Central Europe through a reduction in
conventional forces, and the establishment of
parity at lower force levels in the form of common
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collective ceilings on the military manpower of each
side. This proposal, tabled as a draft treaty, goes
far to meeting Eastern concerns, and underscores Western
seriousness and willingness to bring about militarily
significant reductions in Central Europe. We can only
hope that the Soviet Union and its allies will under-
stand the significance of the Western draft treaty
and respond in a positive way.
At this point, let me add a brief note about
CSCE and the Madrid Meetings, since the CSCE process
is decidedly relevant to the overall climate for arms
control efforts. Like the UN Charter, the Helsinki
Final Act recognizes that basic human rights and
fundamental freedoms are an essential element in the
overall equation that defines security and cooperation
between States. The United States is committed to the
Helsinki Final Act and to the CSCE process in its
entirety. As part of this commitment, we seek
balanced and substantive improvements both in the
implementation of previously made agreements and in
strengthening their provisions. That was our intent
when the Madrid Meeting first convened two years ago,
and that will be our intent when it resumes on November 9.
Unfortunately, however, events in Poland and the brutal
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intensification of repression in the Soviet Union clearly
indicate that other States do not share our commitment to
the integrity of the process begun at Helsinki. This wjll
make progress at Madrid extremely difficult.
Another important arms control challenge facing the
international community is the threat of the spread
of nuclear weapons. The United States and the Soviet
Union have assumed special responsibilities to work
together in order to limit and reduce nuclear arms. The
United States has been trying to carry out that responsi-
bility through a long series o.f nuclear arms control
proposals, starting in 1946. It will continue to do so.
But the problem of non-proliferation is not merely one of
negotiating nuclear arms control agreements between
the Soviet Union and the United States. The issue runs
deeper. Every State, nuclear and non-nuclear alike,
has the same interest in preventing nuclear prolifera-
tion.
States
Shultz
threat
A world of numerous and dispersed nuclear weapon
would be unstable and unpredictable. As Secretary
said to.the General Assembly a month ago, "The
of nuclear proliferation extends
the world and demands the attention and
-government." International cooperation
proliferation is essential if we are to
major threat to international peace.
to every region in
energy of every
in non-
confront this
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The IAEA and the NPT are the most universally
accepted instruments of non-proliferation policy and
deserve continued broad support. They cannot alone
guarantee the world against nuclear proliferation.
But they are indispensable weapons in the effort.
Like a number of other international institutions,
IAEA has recently been made the victim of a damaging
attack. Some member States have attempted to use the
agency as a forum for political warfare. The procedures
used in these deplorable episodes are contrary to the
Charter and the statutes of each of the agencies involved.
The United States and a number of other nations are
resolved to resist this trend as a major threat to the
efficacy of our international institutions. All that has
been achieved in nearly 40 years of devoted effort is
imperilled.by such short-sighted and illegal behavior.
The United States calls on all members of the United
Nations to join in protecting -- and strengthening --
these invaluable international resources, which are and
must remain universal in their reach.
The U.S. continues its efforts to seek wider accep-
tance of the NPT, and earlier this month in Washington we
were pleased to welcome Uganda into the ranks of NPT
parties -- the 119th country to recognize the NPT as an
important element of international security.
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The United States continues to believe that nuclear
weapon-free zones can,.under appropriate conditions,
enhance regional security. The Treaty of Tlatelolco has
contributed significantly to the prospects for long-term
security in Latin America, and we remain hopeful that
progress can be made towards its full entry into force.
.throughout the region. We believe that nuclear weapon-
free zone arrangements could contribute to the security
and peace of other regions as well. We commend efforts
toward this end, and would urge the relevant countries
to explore more actively the possibilities for progress in
this area.
Mr. Chairman, I should like to turn now to a subject
to which my Government attaches major importance the matter of chemical weapons, their use, and efforts
to ban them. When I spoke to this body last year, I
underlined the deep and continuing concern of my Govern-
ment over the use of chemical warfare in Southeast Asia
and Afghanistan. Since that time even more compelling
evidence of this activity has come to light. The United
States brought this,new evidence to the attention of the
United Nations in March of this year in the form of a
report which compiled all of the evidence we had before us
into a single document. The conclusions contained in that
report are unassailable: that selected Lao and Vietnamese
forces, under the direct supervision of Soviet personnel,
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have used lethal chemical weapons -- including prohibited
toxins -- since 1976 at least; and that Soviet forces in
Afghanistan have used a variety of lethal and non-lethal
chemical agents since the December 1979 invasion.
Since the release of this report, others have
conducted their own investigations and have come indepen-
dently to similar conclusions. The Canadian Government,
for example, recently submitted a report to the United
Nations which cited further evidence of the use of such
lethal chemical substances in Southeast Asia. I regret to
say that such use continues. My own government has obtained
further significant evidence of such use, which we will
shortly submit to the United Nations. Finally, there is
the United Nations' own group of experts, whose report on
this subject we expect before the end of this Assembly
session. Their task is not an easy one. As President
Reagan stressed this summer in his address to SSOD II,
therefore, we urge the governments of the Soviet Union,
Laos, and Vietnam to grant full and free access to the
areas in which chemical attacks have been reported.
Ending the use of these horrible weapons should be given
the highest priority by the international community.
Violations of existing legal constraints have a negative
impact on the entire arms control atmosphere.
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It is against this backdrop that efforts have
continued in the Committee on Disarmament to develop
a convention which would ban the development, produc-
tion, and stockpiling of chemical weapons. Is it any
wonder that the United States, along with many other
delegations, insists that such a convention contain
effective verification provisions? Is it any wonder
that the Committee is devoting so much careful con-
sideration to this critical aspect of a convention?
We only wish that it had been possible to make more
progress on the matter this year.
Many of you, no doubt, recall that in June, when
Foreign Minister Gromyko appeared before the General
Assembly's Second Special Session Devoted to Disarmament,
he unveiled a new Soviet proposal on chemical weapons, in
the fcrm of "basic provisions" for a draft convention.
Part of that draft convention addressed the issue of
verification in terms which suggested that the Soviet
Union might now be prepared to accept systematic interna-
tional on-site inspection in certain circumstances.
This appeared to be an interesting and constructive
step. Most of us believe that systematic international
on-site inspection, which cannot be vetoed, is essential
to the verification of a ban on chemical weapons. But when
our delegation to the Committee on Disarmament's summer
session -- together with many others -- sought to obtain
elaboration from the Soviet delegation about their own
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proposal, we were met with equivocation and evasion.
We hope and expect that a more constructive attitude
will prevail at the next CD session.
Mention of the Committee on Disarmament leads me
to discuss another issue, important to all of us, which
has preoccupied the Committee for many years. This is
the question of a comprehensive nuclear test ban.
The United States does not believe that, under
present circumstances, a comprehensive nuclear test ban
would reduce the threat of nuclear war because such a ban
could not reduce the threat implicit in the existing
stockpile. Furthermore, the verification of a CTB would
remain a serious problem. As yet, we see no definitive
solution. However, I want to repeat here what I said
earlier in the year to the Committee on Disarmament: a
comprehensive nuclear test ban remains a long term United
States arms control objective. With that objective in
mind, we proposed that the verification aspects of the
nuclear test ban problem be discussed in a working group
of the Committee on Disarmament, a proposal which ulti-
mately won the approval of the Committee. What happened
next is instructive. The Soviet Union and its allies,
having agreed to the mandate for the working group, sought
to obstruct effective work in the group. Then it put
forward the proposition that the working group had
fulfilled its mandate.
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In his speech before the General Assembly, Foreign
Minister Gromyko called for the negotiation of a compre-
hensive nuclear test ban treaty and, in the meantime,
proposed a moratorium on all nuclear explosions. The
Foreign Minister has also tabled a draft treaty for our
consideration, as well as draft resolutions on the
subject. The United States will, of course, study these
proposals with care. Much of the material in these pro-
posals is already familiar.
The Soviet proposal makes no reference to verifica-
tion. By its very nature it lacks any means to ensure
compliance. I should note that the last time we had a
moratorium on nuclear testing, some 20 years ago, it was
abruptly followed by a large series of Soviet nuclear
tests -- tests whose clandestine preparation had clearly
been underway during the moratorium. They included the
two largest nuclear tests ever carried out, one of which
had a yield of about 60 megatons.
The Soviet Union has placed great emphasis in its
public statements on its pledge not to be the first
to use nuclear weapons. The Soviet position is a cynical
exploitation of one of the most troublesome moral issues
of our age. The controversy about "no first use" pledges
underscores the wisdom of the Secretary General's advice
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that all the nations recommit themselves to the
principles of the Charter. NATO has long followed
a policy -- one it has recently reiterated -- that
none of its weapons will ever be used "except in
response to attack". We see no value in a pledge
not to be the first to use nuclear weapons if a
"right", or at least the power to use conventional
weapons in contravention of the UN Charter, is claimed
and reserved. The main effect of nuclear arms control
agreements should not be to make the world safe for
conventional aggressive war. In any event, the Soviet
"no first use" pledge is unverifiable and unenforce-
able. Its credibility is belied by the nature of Soviet
military doctrine, and by the ominous Soviet buildup of
massive land-based ballistic missiles, which present an
obvious threat of first use.
Mr. Chairman, I have often spoken of the problems
which an excessive devotion to secrecy can pose to arms
control efforts. Many in this chamber have long argued that
greater openness in military matters could help to reduce
tensions and lessen the danger of war. Some measures
along these lines have already been instituted in Europe
as an outgrowth of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, and indeed they have made a modest
contribution to a reduction of tensions in this most
heavily armed area of the world.
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My Government is among those which would like
to see a wider application of the principle of openness.
In particular, we should like to see greater participation
of States in the reporting of their military budgets to
the United Nations, which the General Assembly has
repeatedly endorsed, and in the work of the UN experts to
improve the comparability of statistics. President
Reagan emphasized this policy in his speech to the General
Assembly at its Second Special Session on Disarmament
in June. It is our hope that this session of the General
Assembly will encourage a broadening of the effort to
promote full disclosure, and we will be suggesting ways in
which this might be done.
Similarly, I think the World Disarmament Campaign,
which was debated at the Special Session, holds some
promise for promoting more widespread, open, and thought-
ful debate about disarmament. This is to be welcomed,
provided agreed principles for the campaign are univer-
sally observed. As you know, the United States worked
hard at the Special Session to ensure that these princi-
ples are included in the Campaign. We think that this
point is worth emphasizing again in any resolution which
the Assembly may consider this fall on the Campaign.
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The Secretary General's call to the nations to
recommit themselves to the Charter should be the dominant
theme of this session of the General Assembly. The
natural place to begin the effort he recommends is the
nuclear arms negotiations between the Soviet Union and the
United States, now going on in Geneva. We urge the Soviet
Union to abandon the claim of a right to retain a nuclear
arsenal which goes beyond any conceivable limits of
defense and deterrence. To accept the principle of deter-
rence as the foundation of the INF and START talks would be
a giant step towards the goal of peace.
In conclusion, I return to the theme with which
I started -- that arms control and disarmament efforts
can be useful instruments of a strategy for attaining
and preserving peace, but in no sense can they be a
substitute for such a strategy. In the absence of general
respect for the rules of the Charter, arms control negotia-
tions can be futile at best, and damaging to the cause of
peace at worst. As the Secretary General has reminded us,
peace can be ensured only by enforcing the prescriptions
of the Charter against aggression. Since no one can be
certain that the escalation from conventional to nuclear
war would not occur, the only way to free mankind from the
threat of nuclear war is to stop conventional war as well.
The draft pastoral letter of the Committee on War and Peace
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of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the
United. States, released on October 25, 1982,*puts the
issue with austere eloquence:
"We must reemphasize with all our being ...
that it is not only nuclear war that must be
prevented, but war itself, the scourge of
humanity."
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