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Hundreds of people turned out
to the Robson Square media cen-
tre for Vancouver’s Disarma-
ment Festival Saturday, to look
over booths and posters mounted
by various peace and disarma-
ment organizations, to applaud
the singers, dancers and actors
that performed throughout the
day and to listen as United Na-
tions disarmament advisor Ingrid
Lehmann emphasized the role
that citizens could play in cam-
paigning for world disarmament.

And after Lehmann had spo-
ken, scores of the Festival partici-
pants — including mayor Jack
Volrich — lined up to add their
names to the ‘“people to people”’
scroll pledging friendship to Van-
couver’s sister city in the Soviet
Union, Odessa.

Designed by Vancouver artist
Herb Gilbert, the scroll is to be
presented to the return delegation
from Odessa expected to visit
Vancouver some time in 1981.
Volrich said earlier that he would
be “‘pleased to present’’ the scroll
as a “gesture of friendship and
one way of encouraging the pros-
pects for world peace.”’

The events at the festival
—sponsored jointly by the United
Nations Association and the Co-
alition for World Disarmament
— covered more than 10 hours
throughout Saturday afternoon
and evening, with films and cul-
tural groups drawing capacity au-

diences in the media centre’s two
theatres.

Among the groups which per-
formed throughout the day were:
the Green Thumb Players; the
L’Ecole Bilingue Choir; the

_Olaza Spanish Dancers; Vancou-
ver Sakura Singers; Kobzar
Dancers; the Federation of Rus-
sian Canadians Choir; the Strath-
cona Chinese Community Centre
Dancers; the Epirotian Greek

Dancers; Ken Waters; Tom Haw- -

ken; Pied Pear; and the Frosty
Mountain String Band. /

The film series included
“Boom,”’ the animated film win-
ner at the Cannes film- festival;
“Nuclear Countdown,”’ produc-
ed by the UN disarmament cen-
tre; and ‘‘Who’s in Charge
Here?”’ the film put out by Ma-
chinists Union in the U.S. urging
a campaign for conversion to
non-military production.

Students from L’Ecole Biling-
ue in Vancouver had produced
drawings which were displayed
around the media centre.

Theatre booths by various
organizations including the spon-
sors, the UN Association and the
Coalition for World Disarma-
ment, the B.C. Peace Council,
the Fellowship of Reconciliation
and others, focused on the arms
race and the need — made par-
ticularly urgent by the new U.S.
nuclear strategy and increased

arms spending — for a public
campaign for disarmament.

Ingrid Lehmann, a special ad-
visor to UN secretary-general
Kurt Waldheim who works in the
UN disarmament centre, also em-
phasized citizen action for dis-
armament, telling a capacity
audience that the arms race “‘is an
issue which concerns our very ex-
istence.

“The arms race continues to-
day at a pace of $1 million per
minute — day in and day out,”
she said. ‘‘The people of the

-world must be made aware of the
consequences if it is not curbed.”’

Despite those frightening sta-
tistics, she said, there is no reason
to succumb to defeatism.

‘Public opinion is a great fac-
tor in world politics — and public
opinion can be influenced to br-
ing pressure to bear on govern-
ments.

““We can face this danger — if
there is a political will,’’ she add-
ed.

She praised those who were
active in peace and disarmament
groups, noting that their ‘‘social
activism is the leaven of our soci-

Those people who are active in
organizations and active in the
campaign for disarmament are
the ones who will bring change,.
she said.

“Tt is they who can assure that
there will be a will to disarm —
“and that the world will exercise its
political will to disarm.”

Minnie Searle (left) and Rosaleen Ross of the B. ct ‘Council talk with caceeraby from their booth,
one of several put up by various peace and disarmament groups. Behind them is Canadian Catholic

\ Organization for Peace and Development.

U.S.-USSR talks underway

Preliminary talks between the
United States and the Soviet
Union, aimed at defining the scope
of future nuclear armament
negotiations, began in Geneva;
Switzerland, Oct. 17.

It was the first meeting be-
tween the U.S. and Soviet

negotiators in over 10 months.

Spurgeon Keeny, deputy director
of the Arms Control and Disarma-
ment Agency, is heading the U.S.
delegation. Viktor Karpov, a
former deputy chief SALT
negotiator and director of
Moscow’s disarmament division, is
leading the Soviet delegation.

The two men have stressed that
the new round of negotiations were
exploratory and should be regard-
ed as “‘talks about talks.”

The present discussions are
centered on outlining the context of
agreements between both nations
to limit their long-range ages
forces — missiles and aircraft —
Europe. If agreement can eradh:
ed on which weapons are
negotiable, the actual basic
bargaining would take place within
the framework of a third round of
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty,
or SALT III.

The present SALT II treaty still
has not been ratified by the United
States Senate, and in the opinion of
various Western European and
US. officials, the outcome of the
U.S. presidential election will have
significant influence on SALT II
and any further talks.

At the same time, in New York,
Paul Warnke, the former director

PACIFIC: TRIBUNE—OCT. 31; 1980-Page 10° >

of the U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, called for
the ratification by the oe S. of
SALT II.

“The existing balance of forces
between the USSR and the U.S.
can be preserved not by the increase
of the Pentagon’s spending but by
ratification of the SALT II treaty
and new talks on the reduction of
strategic arms,”’ he said during a
speech to conference organized by
the Centre for Defence Informa-
tion.

Warnke, who was chief U.S.

’ negotiator for SALT II, stressed

that the current U.S. policy of in-
stituting new programs such as the
MX missile, binary nerve gas and
other arms could only lead to an
unrestrained arms race which
would aggravate the current inter-

_ national situation and increase the

risk of nuclear confrontation.

~

Disarmament Week Oct. 24-31 :
Festival underscores peace campaign

TRIBUNE PHOTOS —SEAN GRIFFIN

FESTIVAL AUDIENCE ...

packing the theatres throughout the

‘Tell Trudeau to get
on with peace plan’

“Canada is in the best position
of any country in the world to
undertake peace initiatives — but
will have to keep after Trudeau to
make sure its done,’’ Dr. William
Epstein, a Canadian consultant
to the UN secretariat on disarma-
ment told a near-packed audience
at the Robson Square Theatre
Friday night.

“Write letters to your MLAs

- and MPs. Get to the media and

your friends. Raise hell about
why Trudeau isn’t following
through with the strategy of suf-
focation of the arms race he pre-
sented to the UN’s special session
on disarmament in Sept. 1978,”
Epstein said,

Praising the strategy of suffo-
cation as a ‘‘magnificent pro-
gram,” he said that now ‘‘it just
takes guts to fight for.’’

The strategy includes the call
for a nuclear test ban, a halt to the
testing of delivery vehicles and
flight testing, an end to produc-
tion of all fissionable materials
for military purposes and cuts in
‘military expenditures.

Epstein singled out former
Tory Harold Green, who propos-
eda ban onall nuclear weapons in
outer space in 1962 ‘‘without con-
sulting Big Brother’ (the U.S.),
as exemplifying the kind of role
Trudeau should be playing in the
“‘Green said that all nuclear
weapons should be kept from
outer space. Eighteen months
later, in 1963, an agreement was
reached and codified into a treaty
in 1967.”

He also cited the fact that Can-
ada was not involved in any ma-
jor dispute, had a good interna-
tional record and economic clout,
as additional reasons why it was
in the best position of any country
to undertake ‘‘unilateral initia-
tives for reciprocal restraint.

“Tt’s up to us to get the Cana-
dian government to stop this mad
race to oblivion,”’ he declared.

spread idea that the U.S. military
industrial complex was playing
“catch up”’ with the Soviet Un-
ion, saying that the U.S. was five
to 10 years ahead of the USSR in
terms of accuracy and sophistica-
tion, ‘‘regardless of all that crap
you hear.

“The U.S. could stop every-
thing for a year — they are that

far ahead — and then call on the

Soviet Union to do the same.”’
He challenged another myth —
that a nuclear war, if unleashed,
would be the result of
“planning.’’ With the develop-
ment of increasingly complicated
nuclear missile systems, he noted
the greater the possibility there is
of mechanical or human error.
“There have been three false
alerts already. Maybe next time

we won’t be so lucky,’ he sug-

gested.

When asked during question
period about the importance of
the anti-nuclear power campaign,
Epstein, in turn, asked “‘why
don’t we zero in on the really im-
portant things — like the fight
against nuclear arms?”

Earlier, on the same platform,
mayor Jack Volrich delivered an
impassioned plea for peace and
disarmament, suggesting that the
“only hope for survival in this
world today was by making sure
our collective voices are heard.

“And damn it all,” he said,
“my voice is going to be heard,
and all of our voices, because the

_ issue is survival or annihilation.

“It is vitally important for the
city, provincial and federal gov-
ernments to come together and
tell the power brokers and politi-
cians in high places, that we are
quite happy living in this world
and want to continue living init.

Volrich pledged himself to br-
ing a local focus to this issue by
supporting local activities such as }
those organized for Oct. 24, pro-
claimed by Volrich as UN Day,
and the week following as Dis-
armament Week in Nancouset: 3)

\__ Epstein also slammed the wide-