News In Brief

No first strike by NATO, US arms-talk official says

A senior US disarmament negotiator was quoted here Monday as ruling out NATO's use of cruise missiles for a first strike against the Soviet Union, saying such an attack would be suicidal.

Two local newspapers, Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet, quoted Ambassador James Goodby, acting head of the US team at European disarmament talks in Stockholm, as saying that neither the Western nor Eastern military alliances had a genuinely strong first-strike force capable of inflicting such damage to eliminate the possiblility of retaliation.

Soviet spokesman Leonid Zemyatin had said here that NATO cruise missiles, placed in Western Europe last November, could be used for a first strike against the Soviet Union.