Objections Overruled

The U.S.'s self-imposed one-year suspension of nuclear tests has stirred uneasiness at the Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission, mostly because it seriously hinders U.S. research on compact nuclear weapons with reduced fallout. Last week, overruling Defense and AEC objections, President Eisenhower decided to extend the nuclear-test suspension, scheduled to end on Oct. 31, for two extra months.

Behind the decision lay the fact that the U.S.-British-Soviet conference in Geneva, aimed at reaching a test-ban agreement with adequate safeguards against cheating, had just recessed its bogged-down negotiations until Oct. 12 to await the outcome of face-to-face talks between the President and Russia's Nikita Khrushchev. Ike agreed with the State Department that the span between Oct. 12, when the Geneva conference starts up again, and Oct. 31, when the U.S. test-suspension period was supposed to end, would not give the conference enough time to make any progress no matter what the outcome of the Eisenhower-Khrushchev talks.

Britain, told in advance of the U.S. decision, promptly said that it, too, was extending the test ban two months to Dec. 31. Following day the Soviet Union announced that it will not resume its own testing until somebody else does--which left it up to the U.S. either to risk the propaganda loss of starting first or to let the suspension rest as it is. without the safeguards, e.g., inspection, it deems necessary to an effective agreement.

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