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162
Ministerial Sessions of the North Atlantic Council, Texts of Final Communiqus - 1977.
163
New York Times, December 7, 1977, page #3.
164
New York Times, December 2, 1977, page #2. See also Manfred Worner, NATO Defenses and Tactical Nuclear Weapons
in Wolfram Hanrieder (Ed.), Arms Control and Security: Current Issues (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), page #262.
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made superfluous by President Carter s April 1978 decision].165
The next major mention of the neutron bomb in a NATO nation took place in the
British House of Commons on February 22, 1978, when Prime Minister James Callaghan
defended the value of the weapon and accused the Soviet Union of launching an anti-
neutron bomb propaganda campaign which completely ignored the greater destructive
power of the SS-20 mobile missile which it had begun to introduce into the Warsaw Pact
arsenal [see Chapter Eight]. Labor MP s responded, however, by urging Callaghan to
denounce the neutron bomb.166
The following day the Times of London came out in support of Callaghan, saying that
the real reason for the Soviets campaign was not moral indignation but rather a fear that
the neutron bomb would threaten the strategic value of their existing tank superiority in
Europe.167 On March 4th the Financial Times added its editorial endorsement, saying that
public criticism of the bomb had subsided, that the weapon was not likely to increase the
probability of nuclear war, and that both Britain and West Germany should officially
endorse it.168
A short time later, however, the neutron bomb suffered a setback on the continent.
On March 6th Dr. Rlof Kruisinga, Dutch Defense Minister, announced his resignation
following a difference of opinion on the bomb with other members of the cabinet.169
Kruisinga was known as a strong opponent of the bomb, and the reaction of the Dutch
Parliament three days later was to adopt a resolution opposing production of the neutron
bomb and calling upon the government to communicate that position as policy to the
United States and other NATO nations. Prime Minister Andreas van Agt refused,
however, saying that the government s view was that further NATO talks would have to
be held before an official position could be taken.170
On February 24th there was a secret meeting of NATO Ambassadors in Brussels,
attended by Leslie H. Gelb, head of the State Department s Bureau of Political and
Military Affairs. Gelb presented a proposal that the neutron bomb be used as a bargaining
chip to get the Soviets to limit or halt deployment of their SS-20 in eastern Europe. The
converse side of this move was to make it easier to proceed with neutron bomb
production from a political standpoint, because a Soviet refusal would tend to place the
onus on them. Some immediate doubt on the part of U.S. defense analysts surfaced,
however; there was a problem of symmetry in the proposal. The SS-20, unlike the
neutron bomb, is not a tactical battlefield weapon but a medium-range ballistic missile
with three independent nuclear warheads.
Gelb introduced another option - for NATO to use the issue of the neutron bomb in
the NATO-Warsaw Pact troop reduction talks currently stalled in Vienna. Once again there
was a symmetry problem, though, because there was no obvious trade that the Pact
could make.171
The NATO negotiations were discussed publicly by Defense Secretary Harold Brown
in a Washington, D.C. news conference on March 10. He did not speculate on the
reception of the proposal by other NATO members, though it was rumored after the
Brussels meeting that the British and Germans had been favorable while the Dutch had not
165
Interview with a NATO government official, Washington, D.C., October 1979.
166
Times of London, February 22, 1978, page #1.
167
Times of London, February 23, 1978, page #17.
168
Financial Times, March 4, 1978, page #12.
169
Times of London, March 6, 1978, page #4.
170
New York Times, March 9, 1978, page #5.
171
Washington Post, March 10, 1978, page #A-1.
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[on the grounds that formal introduction of the neutron bomb into negotiations would
imply their government s a priori acceptance of its production].172 In the Netherlands a
strong anti-neutron bomb campaign organized by the Dutch Communist student and key
leader Niko Schten was under way; by April 16th more than one million signatures had
been obtained for petitions against the manufacture or deployment of the weapon.173
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