After Long Illness

At Lake Success last week, U.N.'s Atomic Energy Commission was ready to lay down the futile burden it had carried nowhere for almost two years, and give up the ghost. Said Britain, France and the U.S. in a joint post-mortem supported by a majority of the others: "No useful purpose can be served by carrying on negotiations . . . The commission therefore recommends that . . . negotiations in the Atomic Energy Commission be suspended."

Who had killed world atom control? One after another, the delegates of seven nations--France, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Belgium, China, Colombia--pointed at Soviet Russia. Andrei Gromyko objected, claimed that all avenues to agreement had not been explored. This attitude was necessary for the sake of Moscow's propaganda claims that the West, not Russia, had sabotaged international agreement.

Delegates disagreed with Gromyko; they had been exhausting a series of Soviet proposals since A.E.C.'s inception. All Russian proposals had had two main ingredients : 1) the U.S. would have to stop making bombs and get rid of its stockpile at once; and 2) the control (or even the inspection) of Soviet atomic plants by a true international agency would be an interference with Soviet "sovereignty." The Russians wanted no one to have any secrets--except the Russians. Chided the majority-backed resolution, in the understatement of the year: "Secrecy in the field of atomic energy is not compatible with lasting international security."

There might still be a few more meetings; a report would have to be made in September to the 58-nation General Assembly. But there was not much more to be said.

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