"Either-Or"

After 28 weeks of discussion in 82 meetings, the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission this week finally sent its recommendations to the Security Council. The vote was 10 to 0; Russia and Poland abstained. The road to effective international control of the atom still ribboned away indefinitely into the distance--and the next two sections to be traveled would require unanimity. But the long A.E.C. survey had shown the only likely route.

Greatest Step? In the clearest terms he had yet used, Bernard Baruch told A.E.C. why the U.S. would not yield its atomic know-how unless the control plan included specific guarantees against veto protection for violators. Baruch said that the A.E.C. recommendations would "die aborning" unless "all of the great powers" on the Council accepted them. He added: "It has been said that if a great nation decided to violate a treaty, no agreements, however solemn, will prevent such violation; that if a great nation does not have the right to release itself from its obligation by veto the result will be war. I agree. I believe that a clear realization of this would be the greatest step toward peace that has been taken in history. Let all nations that willingly set their pens to the terms of this treaty realize that its willful breach means punishment and, if necessary, war. Then we will not lightly have breaches and evasions. . . .

"Gentlemen, it is either--or. Either you agree that a criminal should have this right ... or you vote for this sound and basic principle of enduring justice and plain common sense."

Other members, notably France's Parodi and Britain's Cadogan, did not see the issue in quite such dramatically black-&-white terms. But after Andrei Gromyko warned that Russia was ready to call for an item-by-item discussion of the whole recommendation, everybody was willing to have A.E.C. pass the argument up to the Security Council.

Only Gromyko, whose shrewd, stubborn in-fighting for Russian views was rewarded this week by a promotion to Deputy Foreign Minister, publicly and directly questioned Baruch's interpretation. Said he: "What the representative of the U.S. proposes actually is a revision of the [U.N.] Charter. The fact that the American proposal provides for a voluntary relinquishment of the so-called 'veto' . . . does not change the situation." But this was a milder Soviet objection than many previous ones.

Double Abstention. Last week when the A.E.C. considered actual enforcement of international atomic controls, a much more serious difficulty reared its head. The report said: "The international control authority will require broad privileges of movement and inspection, including rights to conduct surveys by ground and air ... to determine what areas may be suspected of containing clandestine activities. . . . Aerial surveys are essential in some circumstances."

If atomic energy was ever to be subjected to international policing, such inspection would be a reasonable requirement. But how many great powers would submit to aerial survey? When the aerial survey passage of the report came up for discussion, Russia's Semen P. Alexandrov, who had already stated that he was "not participating," participated just long enough to insist that the record show that he had specifically abstained from discussion of any such notion.

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