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SS a NE PON ET Pi

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And three MPs from all parliamentary
eae were on hand as part of a workshop
teflige © people can lobby government to
Rae cule testing and other Canadian

tributions to arms escalation.
aa cheif aim is to educate the medical

€ssion and other health professionals so
f oe they can inform their patients on the
a Of the arms race,’ said conference
Sizer and PSR member Dr. Tom Perry,

IN an interview.
tate Wwe want to inform the public as a
. © — to give them factual material in an

Pen, honest, non-exaggerated way.”

Undoubtedly a chief drawing card at the

denn ence Was Dr. Michael Pentz, science
“an at the Britain’s Open University and

ERNIE REGEHR...Canada ‘locked into’

arms agreements.

head of the 300,000-strong Campaign for

Nuclear Disarmament.
Pentz is also chairman of Scientists
ainst Nuclear Arms, an organization he
syrounded in 1950, Heisa scientist who can
fliver, with impeccable authority, the
Mathematical probability of success of the
nuclear weapons, while reminding
People that ‘only the force of public opinion
€nd this mad race to destruction.”

Pentz’ lectures — including ‘‘new
nological developments in the arms
con and an evening lecture to the ‘Van-
tist a: Institute entitled ‘‘A European scien-
Teas at nuclear weapons,”’ as well as
aes comments at workshops and in-
: Sheets throughout the conference often in-
Stig s:uBhly technical data designed for
h €ntists’ appreciation, punctuated with

UmMorous observations. :
nes all his remarks were aimed at making
Bovereat Point: it is the United States
fo €mment, through the introduction of
ur recent weapons systems, that has

d the arms race to its greatest danger. —

Pentzis also a keen promoter of talks bet-
Shas Soviet and Western scientists. Four
eae of Scientists: Against Nuclear
tha’? including Pentz, met last year with
ik Counterparts in an ‘“‘informal’’ meeting
Viste USSR. This September, Soviets will be

iting scientists in Britain. :
sci We were quite humbled to meet with
Sieg whose whole working life has been
men with the arms race and disarma-
a he admitted in a workshop and at a

Se conference earlier.
and 1 appraisal of the Soviet scientists

\ Peace movement was one of admiration
Mixed with criticism. He said he found both
Soups too “uncritical” of their govern-
tion’ § Position on the nuclear arms ques-

On, but time did not permit further
tation on these points. Lae
iS British scientist, however, said it
Ould be a “big mistake” for outsiders to
Sov the “very active” 18-million member
viet Peace movement.
We'd be quite happy to have those

- humbers insthe British movement. There is

€normous volume of articulate concern

d generally a much higher level of

aWareness about the arms race.

“Ht’s different — there is not all the
volume of dissent with government policies
(as Western countries). This can be explain-
ed by the fact that the people genuinely sup-
port their government’s policies on disarma-
ment as being desirable,” said Pentz.

Dr. Michael Wallace said Canada had
traditionally followed a policy of non-
involvement in nuclear weapons develop-
ment, and cited prime minister Pierre
Trudeau’s call for a “suffocation” of the
arms race at the United Nations Special Ses-
sion on Disarmament in 1978.

But there is a contradiction between the
government’s words and actions, he said.

Former Liberal prime minister Lester
Pearson ‘‘talked of disarmament. But when
the U.S. wanted to install Bowmac (missiles)
in Canada Pearson aad sir’ and prac-

i saluted,”’ he related.
a Aan forces are so involved with thé
U.S. military strategy that in one tense situa-
tion U.S. president John F. Kennedy directly
ordered Canadian forces on “Red Alert”’
and the Canadian defense minister only
discovered this hours later, said Wallace.

Trudeau’s proposals at UNSSOD I — in-
cluding a call for countries to renounce any

role in weapons testing — constituted ‘‘an {

military is locked into a weapons purchasing
arrangement with the U.S.

Through the DPSA the Canadian defense
department must buy ‘‘off the shelf’
American weaponry suited primarily for
American purposes, in exchange for a
‘‘specialized role’? whereby Canada pro-
duces items (for example, the cruise
guidance system at Toronto’s Litton In-
dustries) which the Pentagon agrees to pur-
chase, he explained.

The ‘‘entrenched integration of military
production continentally”’ keeps the Cana-
dian government in line on things such as
cruise testing, since a refusal to do so could
result in reduced access by the Canadian
defense department to the latest, high-
technology weaponry, said Regehr.

Overall, military production accounts for
less than two percent of Canada’s GNP. But
it constitutes between 15 and 20 percent of
the output from the ‘‘industrial corridor’ of
communications and aircraft industries bet-
ween Windsor and Montreal, hé said. Ac-
cordingly, it is in these two industries that

extremely well researched, documented |=]

plan,”’ said Wallace, noting that “many of
those proposals found their way into the
program of the U.S. nuclear freeze move-
ment. : j

“But as usual, Canada didn’t live up to its
words,” Wallace said. The agreement, con-
ducted by secret negotiations, to allow the
Pentagon to test a variety of weapons on
Canadian soil was signed, paving the way for
the possible testing of cruise missiles.

But “popular pressure from labor,
church and civic groups” over the next six to
eight months-may force the Canadian
government to refuse cruise testing, he said.

“‘We must, even at the cost of a major
break in relations with the U.S., reassess our
role (in defense relations). We must say there
is to be absolutely no cruise missile testing in
Canada,” he said. His further remarks were
drowned by applause.

The outcome of the cruise debate will not
only be “‘crucial to the future independence
of Canadian policy’’ but for the course of
world events, he asserted. oe

“Tf we were successful here, just think: it
might be the straw that broke the camel’s
back. It might be the first time Canada made
a difference in world affairs,”’ said Wallace.

Canada has “‘many friends”’ in the U.S.
and ‘Europeans have the same fundamen-
tal reservations about the American policy as
we have,” he noted.

But why is Canada so willing to ac-
comodate the U.S. government on militry
matters?

From Erie Regehr, director of research
at the University of Waterloo’s Institute of
Peace and Conflict Studies, came the ex-
planation that through the Defense Produc-
tion Sharing and Defense Development
Sharing Arrangements, the Canadian

PAULINE JEWETT...MPs lack indepen-
dent analysis.

MICHAEL WALLACE...cruise refusal
worth the risk.

need for planned industrial conversion is
most important.”

Doctors and other health professionals
have a duty to inform their patients of the
dangers of the arms race, several speakers
stressed during the two-day session.

Workshops on Sunday concentrated on
the problems of educating the public, deal-
ing with subjects ranging from ‘‘technical
considerations in the nuclear arms race’’ to
“chow to write a letter to your MP.”’

Leading the latter discussion were three
MPs whose presence showed that the disar-
‘mament, anti-cruise sentiment cuts across
party lines. John Fraser (PC, Vancouver
South), Pauline Jewett (NDP external af-
fairs critic and member for Burnaby/Ed-
monds) and Paul McRae (Liberal, Thunder
Bay-Atikokan) filed a dissenting report as
part of a parliamentary committee on the
arms questions last year.

McRae said many people suffer from the
‘“‘Munich Syndrome’’ meaning they fail to
appreciate the devastating effects of a

- nuclear conflict.

“7 haven’t found the fear in my com-
munity that should be there. I’ve actually
had people say to me, ‘I don’t want to send

" myson off to anuclear war,’’ he said, urging

the physicians and scientists to give the
“chard information”’ about the technological
facts of nuclear arms.

“What we are up against is a mind-set that

_ is extremely difficult to overcome,’’ Fraser

said in agreement. But, he said, ‘“This is no
time to be dissuaded from continuing the
campaign,”’ and urged people to write their
MPs and call on them to meet with groups in
public.

Fraser added that there is a ‘‘slow change
of opinion”’ in the House of Commons on
the arms question.

Jewett said there has been ‘‘very little in-
dependent analysis and assessment’’ by MPs
of the arms race and NATO agreements.

‘*You do have to become reasonably

knowledgeable to fight your case,’’ she said.

‘Counterforce’
behind |

new U.S.

weapons

Cruise missiles and other new
American weapons systems are part of a
first-strike, ‘‘counterforce’’ strategy on
the part of the U.S. military and have
nothing to do with any ‘‘Soviet threat,”’
according to Dr. Michael Pentz.

Others have made similar statements,
but none quite as forcefully as Pentz,
head of Britain’s mushrooming disarma-
ment movement who addressed an au-
dience of more than 600 at the University
of B.C. last weekend.

Development of the cruise, Pershing IT,
the intercontinental MX and the Trident
II missiles have been rationalized by the
Reagan administration as necessary to
counter arms escalation on the part of the
Soviet Union. In particular the first two
systems, designed for intermediate range
use from bases in Europe, have been
touted as a needed ‘‘deterrent’’ to. the
relatively recent Soviet SS-20 missile,
Pentz related.

In reality, the most recent round of
apocalyptic weaponry was motivated by
the Nixon administration’s quest for an

- answer to the dilemma posed by the
mutually assured destructive capabilities
of the U.S. and Soviet arsenals, said
Pentz.

The answer between the moral pro-
blem of ‘“‘pushing the button”’ and the
logical problem of total annihilation lay
in the ‘‘limited nuclear war’’ concept
subsequently enshrined in Presidential
Directive 59. Under it the U.S. has been
building towards a ‘‘first-strike’’
capability, with the end result being that
the former ‘‘deterrent’’ strategy has been
replaced by ‘‘counterforce.”’

A ccounterforce strategy is based on a
‘Jarge number of warheads with good
accuracy”’ and the four new U.S. systems
‘‘all have accuracies about 10 times better
than those of the best Soviet missiles.’’
They will be ‘‘super-lethal to hard
targets’ — in other words, military
targets, said Pentz.

That strategy increases the ‘‘risk of war
by reciprocal misperception” by which
one side might be pressured to launch a
“pre-emptive first strike’? based on

. perceptions — accurate or miscontrued
— of the enemy’s capabilities, said Pentz.

The cruise, being small and mobile, is
the most dangerous of the new ‘“‘SALT-
free weapons.’ Introduction of the cruise
therefore ‘‘may usher in a period in which
the nuclear arms race might become
unstoppable.”

The cruise has been in the planning
stages since 1972, and cannot be con-
sidered a response to the Soviet SS-20, in-
troduced in 1976, said Pentz. The SS-20is
a multiple warhead missile of “‘mid-
Seventies’? technology, comparable to
the U.S. Minutemen II missiles, and con-
stitutes an escalation in the arms race only
in the sense that it replaces the Fifties era

‘SS-4 and SS-5 missiles, he stated.

_ Over the years arms talks have stalled
because the U.S. and Soviets bargain
from different positions. The U.S. wants
to negotiate from a ‘“‘position of
superiority”? which contrasts with the
“‘parity’’ stance of the USSR, said Pentz.

The USSR has advanced numerous
peace initiatives. But the best was that last
’ summer delivered to the second United |
Nations Special Session on Disarma-
ment, in which the late president
Brezhnev declared that the USSR would
never be the first to use nuclear weapons,
Pentz said.

ane 1

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 11, 1983—Page 3

a ee ee
DISARMAMENT

Doctors, scientists seek facts
for ‘prevention’ of holocaust

ag