A high State Department official said today it was a matter of “accelerating urgency” to limit further shipments of advanced arms to the Near East, and revealed that the United States intends to continue contacts with the Soviet Union to seek agreement on limiting the flow of new arms into the area.
The Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations, Douglas Mac-Arthur, 2nd, said in a letter to Rep. Seymour Halpern, New York Republican, that, “in spite of the lack of a positive response to date, the Department of State fully agrees that we should continue our contacts on this question with the Soviet Government as well as the other governments concerned.” He added: “I can assure you we intend to do this. The arms problem remains at the top of the list of our concerns in the Near East, and we will explore every possibility of moving it toward solution.”
The State Department official stressed that it was an objective of U.S. policy “to find some means of turning the spiral of arms acquisition by Near Eastern countries downward, so that the limited resources of these nations can be more fully devoted to economic development. As the appetite grows for sophisticated weapons, the cost of building and maintaining a military arsenal increases enormously. This, together with the greater threat that advanced weapons pose to the peace of the area, makes the Near East arms problem one of accelerating urgency.”
Mr. MacArthur said the United States had “initiated diplomatic contacts on a number of occasions with the governments concerned in a very real effort to achieve some measure of restraint on this arms race. Our contacts have included the Soviet Union,” He pointed out that “the Soviet Union’s role has been a key one, in that it has poured more than $2,000,000,000 worth of arms into the Near East in the last 10 years. Thus far, unfortunately, the Soviet Government has shown no genuine desire to reach an understanding on limiting the flow of arms into the area.” Nevertheless, said Mr. MacArthur, the Department felt that contacts with Russia on this question should be pursued, along with approaches to the other governments concerned.
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