Remarks at the Signing Ceremony of the Seabed Arms Control Treaty.

Mr. Secretary, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen:

It has been very properly pointed out that the seabed is man's last frontier on earth, and that frontier can either be a source of peril or promise.

By the signing of this treaty, we have pledged to seek its promise and to remove its peril. And as has been pointed out by the Ambassador from the United Kingdom and the Ambassador from the U.S.S.R., while this is a modest step among many in the field of control of armaments, it is an indication of progress that has been made and continues to be made toward the goal that we all seek: the control of instruments of mass destruction, so that we can reduce the danger of war.

Certainly, speaking for the United States of America, I pledge that as we sign this treaty in an era of negotiation, that we consider it only one step toward a greater goal: the control of nuclear weapons on earth and the reduction of that danger that hangs over all the nations of the world as long as those weapons are not controlled.

And as our representatives go back to Vienna in just a few weeks, we certainly hope that they will make progress. I can assure all of those gathered here that we seek, as does the Soviet Union and other nations, we seek an agreement there which will reduce the danger of nuclear war which hangs over the world and reduce it by controlling the nuclear arms, both as far as the Soviet Union is concerned and the United States.

So on this occasion I reiterate that while the Ambassador from Great Britain quite properly said this was a modest step, it is an important step when we consider it in all of the aspects of the progress that has been made beginning in the sixties, now continuing in this decade.

We hope that we will be meeting, perhaps in the future, perhaps in this room, perhaps in some other room in some other capital, for the final great step in the control of nuclear arms: the control of nuclear arms on earth.