Non-Proliferation Treaty Talks End on Successful Note

The United States and the Soviet Union on Thursday concluded four days of talks on ways of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, and the U.S. chief representative called the meeting businesslike and successful.

The Helsinki meeting was part of a regular series of consultations between Washington and Moscow on ways of strengthening the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is aimed at stopping additional countries from getting nuclear arms.

Richard Kennedy, head of the U.S. delegation and a special adviser on nuclear affairs to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, said the purpose of the meeting was to “harmonize if possible” the position of the two superpowers ahead of the treaty review conference in Geneva in September.

“We can say that these negotiations have been successful indeed,” Kennedy told a news conference of his meeting with Andrei Petroshans, head of the Soviet Atomic Energy Committee.

The Helsinki meeting was the fifth of its kind since the two superpowers in 1982 agreed to consult each other regularly about the workings of the non-proliferation treaty, one of the few areas of arms control on which they hold fairly similar views.