India Summit Calls for Ban on Space Arms

The leaders of India, Argentina, Mexico, Sweden, Greece and Tanzania appealed Monday for a halt in nuclear arms testing and a ban on development of space-based weapons and missile defenses.

The nuclear disarmament summit meeting, led by India’s newly elected Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in his debut at an international forum, also drafted a “diplomatic program of action” in which the leaders will take turns visiting the world’s major nuclear powers during the next five months.

The New Delhi meeting was first proposed by Gandhi’s mother, the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to encourage arms talks among nuclear powers. It brought together Presidents Raul Alfonsin of Argentina, Miguel de la Madrid of Mexico and Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania and Prime Ministers Olof Palme of Sweden and Andreas Papandreou of Greece.

In what it called its “Delhi Declaration,” the group praised the agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to resume negotiations on arms control.

The same group of leaders issued a disarmament call in May, 1984. Indian Foreign Secretary M. Rasgotra suggested that the group should get at least minimal credit for the resumption of the U.S.-Soviet talks, scheduled for March 12 in Geneva.

“The two superpowers have resumed their arms control negotiations,” Rasgotra said in a briefing for the press. “The initiative of these six countries possibly had something to do with it.”

In light of the renewed talks in Geneva, the six leaders agreed to take turns visiting the five major nuclear powers--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China--during the next five months to stress the position they took here, including “the prevention of an arms race in outer space and a comprehensive test-ban treaty.”

In addition, Greece’s Papandreou announced another meeting Thursday in Athens to be attended by the leaders who met here, except for Gandhi and De la Madrid.