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| WORLD

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Continued from page 1
) The extension will be major boost to the
luck Movement and especially to leaders
| g, 198 Joan Ruddock, chair of the British
| Wh ipaign for Nuclear Disaramment,
|; had appealed to Gorbachev during
ancouver Peace Festival to give the
cout Movement time so that pressure
d be brought to bear on the Reagan
tration to follow the Soviets’ lead

€ moratorium.

‘in his address, Gorbachev once again
i €d on the U.S. to join in the morato-
a On tests and reiterated his call- for
| - European country that would be pre-
| he to receive them — or in Hiroshima,
on peested — toconclude an agreement
te a ig nuclear tests.
| Ut those who stand at the head of the

of ted States show by deeds their concern

People’s lives and health,” he said.
| te nuclear age forcefully demands a
| the approach to international relations,
By Pooling of efforts belonging to differ-
| ,. SOcial systems to end the disastrous
aN Tace and radically improve the politi-
th Climate in the world. Broad vistas will

1 be opened up for the fruitful co-
Deop tion of all countries and peoples. All

€ on earth stand to gain from this,”

he said, 7 sta: gain
cy orbachev also dealt at length with the
fmobyl accident, noting that “for the

;

dent Ronald Reagan to meet him in.

first time ever, we encountered in reality
such as sinister force in nuclear energy that
has escaped control.”

It is still too early to pass final judge-
ment on the causes, he said but “‘when the
investigation is complete, all the necessary
conclusions will be drawn and measures
will be taken ruling out a repetition of
anything of this sort.”

Noting that the “future of the world
economy can hardly be imagined without
the development of atomic power,” he
emphasized that the “indisputable lesson”
of Chernobyl was the need to marshall all
the forces of science and technology to
ensure reliability and safety.

Key to that is international co-
operation, he said, proposing a four-point
program:

@ The development of an international
program of nuclear safety, based on inter-
national co-operation and the exchange of
information and assistance;

@ The convening of an international
conference under the auspices of the
International Atomic Energy Agency;

@ The expansion in both size and
authority of the IAEA;

@ The enhanced involvement of the UN
and its agencies, including the World
Health Organization, in the safe develop-
ment of nuclear power.

While praising those who readily .

offered their assistance to the Soviet union

Reciprocate on ban, U.S. urged
as Soviets extend deadline

during the Chernobyl crisis, Gorbachev
was sharply critical of those in the western
media and in political circles who explo-
ited the accident to erect a new wall of
Cold War misunderstanding.

From the western media, ‘we faced a
veritable mountain of lies,” he charged,
citing the various inflammatory headlines
which had flashed around the world fol-
lowing the accident.

The comments about the reporting of
the event in the west were backed up by
Hans Blix, IAEA director-general, who
called the reporting “fast, massive and
very misleading.”

He said the Soviet news reports were
“late and meagre” but emphasized that
they were “probably not untrue.”

U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz
contributed directly to the U.S. media dis-
tortion, insisting repeatedly throughout
the crisis that the Soviet casualty figures
could not have been correct. That was
mirrored in the UPI report which has still
not been formally retracted its wild and
unsubstantiated report that 2,000 died.

One report which US. television sta-
tions were forced to admit was a hoax,
however, was video footage, supposedly
“smuggled” out of the Soviet Union by a
Yugoslav tourist and purportedly showing
the Chernobyl reactor after the accident. It
proved to be footage of the Trieste hillside
in Italy.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV. . .USSR faced
“‘mountain of lies.’ ‘

Excerpts from Gorbachev's remarks on Chemobyl

0 x
tig Mikhail S. Gorbachev's television
“es

S May 14 on the Chernobyl nuclear
Sov l, as distributed in translation by the
Press agency TASS.
h - Seriousness of the situation was
pent It was necesary to evaluate it
We tly and competently. And as soon as
Ived reliable initial information it
hae ha available to Soviet people and
Oemmeen diplomatic channels to the
| ents of foreign countries.
Cope: © Situation that had taken shape, we
Iiegatted it our top priority duty, a duty of
then Importance to insure the safety of
‘io, PUlation and provide effective assist-
ine those who had been affected by the
fhe habitants of the settlement near the
to, Were evacuated within a matter of
thy 20d then, when it had become clear
th €re was a potential threat to the
ik

Ig SOW — Following are excerpts

oka People in the adjoining zone, they
' ue moved to safe areas,
ben pavtless, the measures that were
gg a ailed to protect many people. Two
a time of the accident — Vladimir
Yevich Shashenok, an adjuster of
tic systems, and Valery Ivanovich
Moje wchuk, an operator at the nuclear
Ny Plant.
aon, Of today 299 people were in hospital
ian as having radiation disease of
ave de degrees of gravity. Seven of them
Ben, €d. Every possible treatment is being
Meg: to the rest, The best scientific and
lg = Specialists of the country, special-
i Nics in Moscow and other cities are
‘thy, 8 Part in treating them and have at
Negi SPosal the most modern means of
tal

le.

© behalf of the Communist Party Cen-
pr, ™Mmittee and the Soviet government
Neg” a Profound condolences to the fami-
Won, @ Telatives of the deceased, to the
Om th cctives, to all who have suffered
“nay ; Misfortune, who have suffered per-

~ ‘98s. The Soviet government will take

care of the families of those who died and
who suffered.

A stern test has been passed and is being
passed by all — firemen, transport and
building workers, medics, special chemical
protection units, helicopter crews and other
detachments of the Ministry of Defense and
the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

I must say that people have acted-and are
continuing to act heroically, selflessly. I
think we will yet have an opportunity to
name these courageous people and assess
their exploit worthily.

The most serious consequences have
been averted. Of course, the end is not yet. It
is not the time to rest. Extensive and long
work still lies ahead. The level of radiation
in the station’s zone and on the territory in
the immediate vicinity still remains danger-
ous for human health.

I cannot fail to mention one more aspect
of that affair. I mean the reaction abroad to
what happened at Chernobyl. In the world
on the whole, and this should be emphas-
ized, the misfortune that befell us and our
actions in that complicated situation were
treated with understanding.

We are profoundly grateful to our friends
in socialist countries who have shown solid-
arity with the Soviet people at a difficult’
moment. We are grateful to the political
and public figures in other states for the
sincere sympathy and support.

We express our kind feeling to foreign
scientists and specialists who showed readi-
ness to come up with assistance in overcom-
ing the consequences of the accident. I
would like to note the participation of
American medics Robert Gale and Paul
Terasaki in the treatment of affected per-
sons and to express gratitude to the business
circles of those countries which promptly
reacted to our request for the purchase of
certain types of equipment, materials and
medicines.

We evaluate in a fitting manner the objec-
tive attitude to the events at the Chernobyl
nuclear power station on the part of the

International Atomic Energy Agency and
its Director General, Hans Blix.

In other words, we highly appreciate the
sympathy of all those who treated our trou-
ble and our problems with an open heart.

But it is impossible to leave without
attention and political assessment the way
the event at Chernobyl was met by the
governments, political figures and the mass
media in certain NATO. countries, espe-
cially the U.S.

They launched an unrestrained anti-
Soviet campaign.

It is difficult to imagine what was said
and written these days — “thousands of
casualties,” “mass graves of the dead,”
“desolate Kiev,” that “the entire land of the
Ukraine has been poisoned,” and so on and

so forth.

Generally speaking, we faced a veritable
mountain of lies — most dishonest and
malicious lies. It is unpleasant to recall all
this, but it should be done. The interna-
tional public should know what we had to
face. This should be done to find the answer
to the question: What, in actual fact, was
behind that highly immoral campaign?

_ Its organizers, to be sure, were not inter-
ested in either true information about the
accident or the fate of the people at Cher-
nobyl, in the Ukraine, in Byelorussia, in any
other place, in any other country.

They needed a pretext by exploiting
which they would try to defame the Soviet
Union, its foreign policy, to lessen the
impact of Soviet proposals on the termina-
tion of nuclear tests and on the elimination
of nuclear weapons, and at the same time,
to dampen the growing criticism of the U.S.
conduct on the international scene and of its
militaristic course.

Bluntly speaking, certain Western politi-
cians were after very definite aims — to
blast the possibilities for balancing interna-
tional relations, to sow new seeds of mis-
trust and suspicion towards the socialist
countries.

All this made itself clearly felt during the

meeting of the leaders of “the seven” held in
Tokyo not so long ago. What did they tell
the world, what dangers did they warn
mankind of? Of Libya, groundlessly accused
of terrorism, and also of the Soviet Union,
which it turns out, failed to provide them
with “full” information about the accident
at Chernobyl. And not a word about the
most important thing — how to stop the
arms race, how to rid the world of the
nuclear threat.

The accident at Chernobyl station and
the reaction to it have become a kind of a
test of political morality. Once again two
different approaches, two different lines of
conduct were revealed for everyone to see.

The ruling circles of the U.S. and their
most zealous allies — I would like to men-
tion specially the Federal Republic of Ger-
many among them — regarded the mishap
only as another possibility to put up addi-
tional obstacles holding back the develop-
ment and deepening of the current
East-West dialogue, progressing slowly as it
is, and to justify the nuclear arms race.

Our attitude to this tragedy is absolutely
different. We realize that it is another round
of the tocsin, another grim warning that the
nuclear era necessitates a new political
thinking and.a new policy.

As to the “lack” of information around
which a special campaign has been
launched, and of political content and
nature at that, this matter in the given case is
an invented one. The following facts con-
firm that this, indeed is so.

The indisputable lesson of Chernobyl to
us is that in conditions of the further devel-
opment of the scientific and technical revo-
lution the questions of reliability and safety
of equipment, the questions of discipline,
order and organization assume priority
importance.

Further, we deem it necessary to declare
for a serious deepening of co-operation in
framework of the International Atomic
Energy Agency.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 21, 1986 e 5