Inspection for Disarmament

Report Outline
Key Role of Inspection at London Conference
Postwar Negotiations on Arms Inspection
Approach to Synthesis of Major Power Plans
Problems of Arms Inspection and Control

Key Role of Inspection at London Conference

Cautious Optimism on Course of Negotiations

After more than a decade of fruitless negotiation, the tenor and course of discussions being carried on in London by the five-nation subcommittee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission have raised a measure of hope that a beginning can be made in the not distant future on a program of arms control under international inspection. Opened in raid-March and resumed the last week in May after a ten-day recess, the London talks have been notable for the changed behavior of the Russians and for a drawing together of United States and Soviet positions on the general concept of inspection.

Secretary of State Dulles noted, May 14, that while the Soviet rulers had at first rejected President Eisenhower's proposal for aerial inspection “as a matter of principle,” they now had modified their thinking “to the extent that, instead of discussion whether or not there would be such inspection, they accept it in principle, and the debate now is where will there be such inspection.”

Harold E. Stassen, chief U.S. representative at the London meeting, told reporters that he was “cautiously optimistic” that the talks would produce at least limited agreement on the start of an arms reduction plan. The United States and the Soviet Union both appear to realize that they must make a beginning on arms control rather than attempt any grandiose scheme of total disarmament at this time.