Word: moratorium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After nearly 18 months of negotiations at Geneva, the U.S.-British-Soviet delegations seemed close to a nuclear test-ban agreement: an unequivocal pledge to outlaw easily detectable above-ground or underwater explosions and a voluntary moratorium on underground tests-provided the Russians join in an earnest effort to perfect devices for detecting small underground bombs (TIME, April 11). Last week, the nation's top scientific authorities on nuclear detection were called before two subcommittees of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, unanimously made it plain that the black art of concealing small nuclear explosions was fast outstripping...
Through the Haze. At the President's Camp David mountain retreat in Maryland last week, Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Eisenhower discussed the Soviet proposal over the course of two days, agreed on a joint statement accepting a "voluntary moratorium" on below-threshold tests-provided that Russia enter into a treaty banning detectable tests under an adequate inspection system, and agree to a "coordinated research program" for improving detection techniques...
Even before Macmillan's plane left London, the Administration had decided in its own councils to accept Tsarapkin's moratorium proposal in the interest of getting a test-ban treaty that might possibly lead to progress on disarmament...
...sessions that hammered out the decision to accept the Soviet moratorium proposal, Air Force Secretary James Douglas, sitting in for traveling Defense Secretary Thomas Gates, made it clear that the Pentagon, to a surprising extent, had come around to a conviction that the chance for an inspection agreement outweighed the risks and costs of a test...
Merely the Beginning. The President's moratorium decision left plenty of obstacles still lying in the way of a safe guarded test-ban treaty. For one thing, the Russians may really not want any agreement at all, may be dangling concessions to prolong the talks and thus achieve their original aim of getting the U.S. to halt nuclear tests without any agreement on inspection. On this, the U.S. might get a better reading at the summit in mid-May. But even if President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev resolve the basic conflicts on inspection and control measures at the summit...