DISARMAMENT BY INSTALLMENTS

...What kind of control apparatus will be needed to supervise such a reduction...

...In paraphrasing the proposal Winiewicz interpreted it to mean a ban on the further production of nuclear weapons...

...The thawing of the American position at this session of the Assembly was believed to be the result of Stas-sen's pertinacity...

...He also "reserved" the United States position on all the previous work in the field, a phrase that his colleagues regarded as tantamount to shelving all the work that had gone on in the Subcommittee before his arrival...

...Space satellite experimentation The United States suggested an effort to bring under international control the testing of space projectiles such as "earth satellites," "intercontinental missiles," "long-range unmanned weapons," and "space platforms...

...And Richard Sandler of Sweden warned the Great Powers that the fourth country problem might soon be transformed into a "many-countries" problem...

...It involves domestic controls, whereas an absolute ban can be policed from the outside...

...Controlled disarmament will have become an impossibility...

...Not only in West Germany but throughout West Europe there are great pressures to reduce military expenditures, shorten conscription periods, reassign men from the armed services to productive industry...

...But many questions still have to be answered before a protocol can be signed...

...This project is a child of despair, born of the realization that there is no longer any foolproof way to enforce an agreement to eliminate atomic materials already stockpiled...

...His whole policy has been founded on Germany's membership in NATO and German rearmament...

...We are now prepared to negotiate "die progressive installation of an inspection system that will provide against the possibility of a great surprise attack...

...The most important Soviet advance was its acceptance in principle of aerial inspection as a component of a control system...

...Russia, moreover, accepted the two and a half million figure only grudgingly and linked it with a second-stage reduction to one and a half million men to take place in the second year...

...This was the Soviet suggestion for the military neutralization of central Europe...

...In a summing up statement at the end of the debate U.S...

...On the Soviet side, too, there were positive developments that fed the hopes that a beginning step might be made...

...The problem," said France's Moch, "is to include all the territories in which secret concentrations of land forces or air power might be dangerous," namely the staging areas right behind the Russian marshes...

...But one thing is certain, according to Moch: the Russians are preparing an even bigger move...

...True, the Assembly's unanimity was limited to procedure for future discussions of disarmament, but even this modicum of agreement ran counter to Soviet efforts to heighten "Socialist vigilance" by alleging imperialist plots from the West...

...Sweden proposed "a moratorium, a standstill on the testing of nuclear weapons" at least until there is a report from the U.N.'s scientific committee which is evaluating radiation data...

...THE SHATTERING October events in Hungary and the Middle East produced a noticeable tendency in both the Western and Communist camps to recharge cold war passions as a way of keeping allies and satellites in line...

...We have to be ready for it and know how to handle it," were Moch's parting words...

...Once such weapons are in production it will be almost impossible to inspect and verify any agreement to ban them...

...Western unwillingness to discuss these proposals was all the more surprising because they were made after the events in Poland and Hungary showed how much Soviet control over East Europe is dependent on the presence of the Red Army...

...This country made an almost 180-degree turn from narrow stand-pat rigidity to extreme flexibility and initiative...

...Unfortunately a reduction in force levels, far from meaning a reduction in danger, reflects the degree to which armies increasingly are being outfitted with nuclear weapons...

...But recent events, and the hint of more dramatic developments to come, underscore the urgent need for the shaping of a creative Western approach to the challenge ahead...

...Not only did the United States come forward with a whole series of projects, but it indicated its readiness to negotiate these projects separately or as a package agreement...

...Neutral zone The most intriguing proposal put forward by Soviet Premier Bulganin in his disarmament note of November 17, 1956, received little airing during the Assembly's debate and is not likely to figure in the Subcommittee's discussion...

...The maps would then be turned over to the Disarmament Subcommittee which would use them to develop a realistic and balanced early warning system...

...From a balance of terror," he warned, "we may enter into an age of terror without balance...

...The Soviet representative in the disarmament discussion, Deputy Foreign Minister Kuznetzov, termed the proposal "cumbersome" and thought he detected in it an effort to avoid a ban on nuclear weapons...

...It should be added immediately that there is no indication that Moscow is ready for the extensive system of controls such a plan would necessitate...

...Moch has a scheme to lock a group of generals in a room with maps and colored pencils and instruct them to mark out the areas where concentrations of troops and airpower would be a menace to peace...

...Early warning system Soviet acceptance last fall of the principle of aerial inspection buoyed Stassen's hopes that something can now be achieved in the way of a limited application of the President's "open skies" plan...

...The specter that has been haunting disarmament discussions in recent months has been the likelihood that the Great Powers will soon develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, equipped with an atomic warhead and launched from underground platforms...

...The explanation of the West's coyness lies, first of all, in the fact that Chancellor Adenauer is facing an election...

...It would be difficult to exaggerate the uneasiness over continued H-bomb testing...

...The scheme, however, is strongly favored by Britain, which still has to test its H-bomb...

...There is, moreover, no agreement yet among Western leaders whether an agreement retracting American divisions across the Atlantic while Soviet divisions were pulled back behind Soviet borders would be a safe swap—considering that statesmen must plan in terms of decades and generations...

...And like the United States it indicated a willingness not to make implementation of one proposal contingent on acceptance of the others...

...The threat to international security came from the A-bomb warhead and not from the method of delivery, he contended...

...The cynics have an easy explanation for the unanimous vote on disarmament...

...Do the ceilings include reserves...

...The most important thing we now know is that we do not know," was Sandler's comment on the effects of these tests...

...The result of the shifts by die United States and the Soviet Union was to transform the Assembly's debate on disarmament from a stale exercise in Cold War rhetoric into an impassioned directive to the Subcommittee to try to break out of the disarmament stalemate by what Ambassador Brilej of Yugoslavia called "the method of partial agreement...

...In fact the United States plan as it stands would not bar nations from shifting nuclear materials from obsolescent to newer types of weapons, but there will be an effort to find out whether Winiewicz's slip was a hint the Russians would buy the American project if it meant a ban on future production of nuclear weapons...

...The country that seemed most eager to get a discussion started on the Soviet troop withdrawal proposals was, understandably enough, Poland...

...But this was remarkably mild language and he did not rule the plan out...

...If the Russians seemed to move ahead in accepting the idea of an aerial component to an early warning system, the United States reciprocated by receding from its initial insistence of immediate universal application of the "open skies" principle...

...Unfortunately the events of last fall have not made it easy to fashion a common Western policy...

...Ambassador Lodge pledged the United States to pursue "even modest steps which can be agreed upon, and which will help us reverse the trend toward greater and greater stockpiles of armaments...

...Diplomats noted the fact that Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Winiewicz welcomed the American proposal although there is no longer the certainty that Polish views necessarily reflect the thinking in the Kremlin...

...They ascribed to domestic politics his almost exclusive preoccupation with President Eisenhower's proposal for an early warning system based on the exchange of military blue-prints and aerial inspection...

...When Stassen first appeared on the disarmament scene in 1955, his disarmament colleagues did not take too kindly to him...

...delegates are disposed to credit President Eisenhower's special adviser on disarmament, Harold E. Stassen, for our new posture—one that earned us considerable plaudits in the last session of the Assembly...

...This fact, plus the pressure in national parliaments to reduce military expen-itures, is producing the ironical situation where countries like Britain may cut ther armed forces unilaterally before their negotiators in the Subcommittee are able to get an agreement on a multilateral basis...

...Nuclear controls The United States keeps plugging away at a proposal that "all future production ot fissionable materials should be used or stockpiled exclusively for non-weapons purposes under international supervision...

...Israel proposed an arms limitation convention between itself and its Arab neighbors that would be underwritten and guaranteed by the United Nations...

...This group consisting of the atomic Big Five—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and Canada —meets in private and affords the only real opportunity for genuine negotiation...

...In the absence of agreement on a ban or moratorium, the Subcommittee will have before it a proposal by Norway, Japan, and Canada to set up a system for advance registration, and possibly limitation, of test explosions...

...On the basis of hints dropped by Soviet Foreign Minister Shepilov he believes they will soon make a sweeping offer to pull all their forces out of East Europe if the United States will pull .ill of its forces out of West Europe...

...Kuznetzov, nevertheless, derided efforts to establish control over the development and testing of space missiles...

...It is the intention of the West in the March talks to find out as quickly as possible whether agreement is likely in any of these areas: Reduction in force levels Both the United States and the Soviet Union now agree on a first-stage reduction that would place a ceiling of two and a half million men on American and Soviet armed forces and 750,000 on those of Britain and France...

...The American suggestion was vaguely worded and may have been designed primarily to catch the headlines...

...cynics may be right, and yet it should also be reported that so battle-hardened a survivor of the U.N.'s eleven-year disarmament effort as France's indomitable Jules Moch believes the Assembly's unanimity reflected not only a desire to keep the door open, but an expectation that something can come out of the forthcoming London discussions by way of a first installment on disarmament...

...No region could profit more, Israeli Ambassador Comay observed, from being "relieved of its present crushing burden of armament...

...It also conflicted with renewed Western stress on Soviet villainies in the Middle East and Central Europe—an emphasis designed to restore some semblance of unity in NATO ranks...

...An Israeli suggestion on arms limitation evoked great interest at the Assembly although the Subcommittee may not be the place to explore it further...

...Both sides, they contend, must continue to give the impression of wanting to disarm in order to court world public opinion in the costly and perilous arms race...

...The Assembly's resolution established no order of priorities for the Subcommittee's attempt at reaching a limited agreement, but there are a half dozen broad negotiating points that seem to offer the most promise...

...The United States has contended that a second-stage reduction would have to be preceded by a political settlement, at least in the Far East...

...Banning test explosions The United States disappointed the Assembly in tying a ban on test explosions to an agreement on diverting future nuclear production to peaceful uses...

...The Russians do not like the limitation approach...

...This expectation was based partly on a notable shift in the American position...

...Diplomats took this to mean the Russians will brook no interference with their efforts to develop long-range missiles, which from Moscow's viewpoint are the ideal weapons for neutralizing the West's chain of bases...

...But an interesting footnote to the American position is that it did not make its acceptance of the two and a half million figure conditional on Red China's acceptance of a similar limitation—an omission that caused some pain to Australia...

...Can a state, if it wishes, concentrate its forces in one service branch—navy, air, ground forces...

...The United States gave the project a new twist at the Assembly by suggesting that controls on future production could in time facilitate transfers from past production to peacetime uses...

...The JOSEPH P. LASH covers the United Nations for the New York Post...

...It manifestly interests the Russians, as it does us, because of the "fourth country" problem, that is, the imminent possibility that a country other than Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union will be producing nuclear weapons...

...Stassen made Soviet acceptance of the "open skies" plan a prerequisite, a "gateway" to United States agreement on other phases of disarmament...

...Talk of a neutralized central Europe intensifies all these pressures and creates in the minds of Western diplomats the danger of premature demobilization...

...It was surprising, therefore, that the General Assembly of the United Nations should have unanimously agreed on a conciliatory disarmament resolution directing renewed talks this month in London by the five-power Disarmament Subcommittee...

...Specifically the Russians proposed a thinning out of foreign armed forces stationed in East and West Germany and a considerable reduction of United States, British, and French forces stationed in NATO countries and of Soviet forces in Warsaw Treaty countries...

...But in accepting the idea of aerial inspection, the Russians proposed that it be carried out in a zone that would embrace all of West Europe except Spain and Britain on one side, but East Europe only up to the marshy borders of Soviet Russia...

...There is still hope, especially in light of new reports that the National Security Council was prepared to go along with a test ban, that the United States will join the Russians on such a ban...