Co-operative programmes for peaceful use of space cited by United Nations Space Committee.

Co-operative programmes for peaceful use of space cited by United Nations Space Committee

The resumption of the Geneva arms talks and the establishment by the Conference on Disarmament of an ad hoc working group on prevention of an arms race in outer space should permit the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to devote all its "energies, resources and goodwill" to organizing the "maximum degree of international co-operation" towards the non-military use of space, according to Committee Chairman Peter Jankowitsch (Austria).

Opening the Committee's 1985 session in New York, held between 17 and 28 June, Mr. Jankowitsch informed his colleagues of "signal accomplishments" over the past year in international co-operative space programmes. Among them was a mission to survey Halley's Comet--set to reappear in the earth's atmosphere in 1986--undertaken jointly by the Soviet Union, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Poland. Another was the COSPAS/SARSAT "search and rescue" communications system, run by the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada and France. "These impressive activites are indicative of the enormous benefits that can be reaped by a growing number of countries, both in the developed and developing world," Mr. Jankowitsch said.

The Committee's work at this session centred on maintaining outer space for peaceful purposes, implementation of recommendations of the United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE 1982) and the reports of its two Sub-Committee--Scientific and Technical, which met from 11 to 22 February in New York (A/AC.105/351), and Legal, which met in New York from 18 March to 4 April (A/AC.105/352). (The work of the two Sub-Committees was reported in detail in the UN Chronicle, 1985, Nos. 2 and 5.)

Among other decisions, the Committee endorsed the Scientific and Technical Sub-Committee's view on the need to provide appropriate and non-discriminatory remote sensing assistance to meet the needs of the developing countries, and noted a proposal that the theme of the Sub-Committee's 1986 session could be "Remote sensing for developing countries".

The Committee also endorsed the Sub-Committee's view that more specific attention be given to the developing countries' requirements in connection with the use of nuclear power sources in outer space, and recommended that the use of nuclear power...