WASHINGTON The spread of nuclear weapons throughout the world may not be as grim a prospect as once believed, according to major parallel studies by European and American experts.
The studies, published simultaneously by the Council on Foreign Relations, concluded Thursday that the spread of atomic weapons to ‘more countries can be stopped, if the present nuclear powers cooper ate,
The two parallel studies of nuclear proliferation, “do not sound a doomsday alarm,” said the chairman of the American panel, Gerard Smith, former director of the US. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
The chairman of the European panel was Johan Jorgen Holst, former Norwegian minister of state,
The U.S. report, which generally agrees with the European study, says, “What the nuclear states do and say about their own nuclear weapons and about nuclear arms control, will probably affect the long-term prospects for containing proliferation.”
Smith, at a briefing for reporters Thursday, faulted the Reagan administration for refusing to join a comprehensive moratorium on all its Strategic Defense Initiative, the “Star Wars” anti-missile system.
“We are not going to have nonproliferation when we have an open race between the United States and the Soviet Union in offensive and now defensive nuclear weapons,” Smith said. “The U.S ‘attitude on a comprehensive test ban is deplorable.
Six nations are known to have nuclear weapons: the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, France and India.
The two studies agreed that Pakistan is “the most pressing current case” of a country which could go nuclear, since it has the necessary uranium enrichment facilities, has prepared what appears to be a nuclear test site and has imported the parts needed to put together a nuclear weapon.
The United States has great leverage in preventing the final steps, since it is supplying Pakistan with $3.2 Billion in non-nuclear arms in a five-year agreement that ends in 1987.
The U.S arms supply would automatically stop if Pakistan were to test a nuclear weapon, and that plus the realization that India would probably then resume its ‘own nuclear test program has kept the Pakistani government from exploding such a device.
Israelis identified as the country “where development of the capacity to make nuclear weapons has proceeded the furthest.”
The American study says, “Experts agree that (Israel) either has a number of untested nuclear weapons or could produce them on very short notice.
Israel is also the country, the study says, “where the United States would appear to have the greatest leverage” but Smith said, “The political will to exert that leverage doesn’t exist in this county.”
However, a stronger deterrent on Israel, the report said, is the knowledge that confirmed evidence of an Israeli nuclear weapons program would probably give rise to an “Islamic bomb” or a guarantee by the Soviet Union to use its nuclear arsenal to counter Israeli use of such a weapon against the Arab world,
Article extracted from this publication >> April 11, 1986
