Lord Privy Seal Edward Heath said last night that the British Government had no objection in principle to the formation of nuclear-free zones in certain areas, such as the Soviet Union proposed last week for the Middle East in a letter to the Israel Government.
Heath added that Britain was not opposed to such zones, if they were set up voluntarily by the states concerned and if the existing military balance was not disturbed by such arrangements. He said that, in the Mediterranean area, neither of these conditions would be met. He made the statement in reply to a question from Laborite Arthur Henderson about the Government’s position regarding the Russian proposal.
(The U.S. State Department had responded to the proposal the day it was made, by calling it a propaganda gesture aimed at ousting planned Polaris submarines from the Mediterranean.)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.