Workable Test Ban

Arriving in Geneva last summer for a conference hopefully leading to a nuclear test ban, U.S. delegates began laying out a sweeping proposal. The West would agree to an indefinite year-to-year suspension of all nuclear tests provided that the Russians would agree to a reasonable control system under which international teams of inspectors could check all suspicious nuclear-sized blasts.

The proposal soon ran into trouble for two reasons: 1) the Russians demanded veto power over the makeup and movements of inspection teams on Russian territory, thus rendering inspection worthless; 2) U.S. scientists discovered that they had seriously overestimated the ability of inspectors to detect underground explosions. Alarmed by the miscalculation, the Pentagon, the Atomic Energy Commission and some members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy urgently asked President Eisenhower to modify the U.S. offer lest the U.S. get tied to a crippling agreement that an enemy could violate without detection.

Last week in Geneva, U.S. Delegate James J. Wadsworth introduced the modification. This time, the U.S. proposed worldwide ban only on underwater and atmospheric blasts (from ground level up to 31 miles), which are principally responsible for fallout. Exempt from the ban: slight-fallout tests in outer space and underground. The ban would be enforced by eight to ten ground teams strategically located in Russia and by airplane air sampling when necessary. Coupled with this limitation on air and water tests was an invitation to Russia to join the U.S. in renewed underground tests. Object: to determine whether new detection refinements, e.g., seismographic instruments sunk deep into the earth, are effective enough to trust.

The modified plan was largely the brainchild of AEC Chairman John McCone, who outlined his proposals last January (TIME, Feb. 2), and got support from the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. Young (34) Idaho Democrat Frank Church accepted them enthusiastically in a Senate speech last month. Tennessee's Albert Gore, in a well-publicized White House visit, urged the U.S. to confine the ban to atmospheric tests, urged that the U.S. offer to suspend them unilaterally.

The new U.S. proposal requires a quid pro quo and leaves nothing to guesswork. If Moscow really wants to end the peril of fallout (the Moscow test series last October gave North America the heaviest dose of radioactive material ever), it has no excuse for further delay. Meanwhile, as soon as the President lifts the ban on underground and space testing, U.S. planners can get on with sorely needed nuclear development (clean bombs, anti-missile missiles, compact Army and Navy weapons and pure-science experiments) at a time when such strength can be the tranquilizer for Communist-inspired tensions in Germany, the Mideast and Asia.

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