Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HCP Vol XX Special Number - 146 ~ (07927)

1968 No 2

In tiie same way, we cannot argue against disarmament by the indubitable fact that an eventual disarmament would, not obliterate the inventions of science and the technological know-how and thus the danger of reaming, and hence war and nuclear war would remain with us. It is true that disarmament, by itself, cannot guarantee that the present and coming accomplishments of science and technology will never be pressed into the service of ariaamentso But this underscores the necessity of continuing our many-sided effdrts in the interest of peace,, This, however, would not diminish the importance of disarmaments This would lead the nations out of zone of imminent calamity^. How much more simple and hopeful our situation would be if only the task remained with us to work against the return to the road which onco clearly proved impassable and extremely dangerous!

d) The Chances of Disarmament the Results of International Negotiations

Both the danger cf a nuclear catastrophe and the harms caused by the armament race clearly call for d is armament 0 But are we not to see that this ancient dream of mankind will prove a utopia in the end? Do we have or, at least, can we hope tc create the conditions of disarmament in in our divided world which is full of tensions? Thus the question of necessity is unavoidably coupled with the question cf possibility0

While assaying the chance of disarmament? we should first of all devote attention to the progres: , results, lessons and topical significance of the disarmament negotiations which have been going on fer some time..

They indeed can be traced back to the time of the establishment of the UNO« The UNO Charter specifies as one of the tasks of the General Assembly to consider disarmament and the principles governing disarmament (article 11)o The Charter makes it a task of the Security Council to elaborate a plan for establishing a system for controlling disarmament (article 26)« Under those provisions, already the first General Assembly of the UNO had the theme of disarmament, armaments and armament controls on its agenda, and, at the same time, the first special body of the UNO was called into being to deal with this matter- From this time onward, in addition to the verV important and significant bilateral and multilateral talks, disarmament negotiations have been conducted under the auspices cf the UNO assemblies and special committees-In January, 1946; the first special committee of the UNO, the Committee on the Use of Atomic Energy (its members being the representatives of the states par t i c ip at ing in the Security Council and of Canada) s was called into being to which, in February, 1947, the Committee on Conventional Armaments (its members being the representatives of the states participating