Assembly Calls for Immediate Halt To Proliferation of Nuclear Bombs

A group of 75 local lawyers, businessmen, scientists and educators have issued a report calling for a halt in the spread of nuclear weapons.

After meeting for three days at the home of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a posh mansion in Brookline, the group condemned the use of nuclear bombs, even for peaceful purposes, including Project Plowshare, which plans to harness nuclear explosions for such projects as the digging of a new sea-level Panama Canal.

Known as the New England Assembly on Nuclear Proliferation, the group included a number of Harvard professors including Harvey Brooks, dean of Engineering and Applied Physics, Henry A. Kissinger '50, professor of Government, and Richard E. Neustadt, Director of the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. Thomas C. Schelling, professor of Economics, chaired the Assembly.

The group praised the efforts of the United States and the Soviet Union who are now negotiating a non-proliferation treaty at Geneva. Included in the Assembly's report were proposals that all commercial reactors in the world be placed under international safeguards, and that the United States publish a complete inventory of its fissionable material.