The Nome Nugget

U.S. Proposes
Hot Line Between
JFK and Nikita

GENEVA (AP)
The United States proposed today the installation of a direct telephone connecting President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev as part of a detailed system for preventing war by miscalculation or accident.

U.S. Ambassador Arthur Dean urged the 17-nation disarmament conference to give careful consideration to ways of keeping the world from blundering into a war.

He introduced a six-point program for building up confidence between nations and insuring them against surprise attack or blows delivered by accident.

This whole field, Dean said, "offers opportunities for early agreement which should not be passed by."

He did not mention the recent Cuban crisis, but the proposals which he advanced would reduce the chance of a repetition of such a threat to peace.

The American document contained these major points:

I. The nations would give advance notice of major military movements to allay any fears of an aggression.

2. Installation of permanent observation posts at railway junctions, ports, key highway intersections and large airfields plus systems to guard against sneak mobilization.

3. Exchange of military missions by the major powers as a confidence-building measure.

4. Communications links between major capitals to prevent war by miscalculations. A hot telephone between Washington and Moscow -or "Purple Line" as it is sometimes called--would fall in this category.

5. Studies of the ways in which modern weapons themselves might tend to touch off a war.

6. The various countries would make public the steps they had taken individually to prevent war by accident.