Daily Mirror from London, London, England • 7

JOHN PILGER ..0 :....8::.:1 x4 THIS morning the world's most secretive organisation, known innocently as The London Suppliers Group, will meet round a conference table in Whitehall. The meeting, which is supposed to be top secret, will be attended by all fifteen members of the Group (who, among themselves, prefer the more exclusive title of The London Club) Indeed, as the name implies, each is a supplier: a simple salesman, for simple profit, of a rare product in an expanding, highly competitive and lucrative market. The product is nuclear power or, more specific- ally, the means of making nuclear weapons. The fifteen represent countries which export nuclear technology: America, Russia, Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Italy, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Today's meeting will extend membership to Poland and Switzerland.

There were only seven members when the club was formed last year on the initiative of Dr. Henry Kissinger who was concerned, on the surface, with stuffing the nuclear genie back into the bottle. It was then estimated that by 1980 some thirty-five countries would have the means of making an atomic bomb. The genie's head first emerged at Hiroshima in 1945, when the atomic age began, but the body became visible only two years ago when a poor nation, India, exploded her own Bomb. The Canadian spite of its righteous image as a friend of all humanity sold the Indians a nuclear reactor, knowing that plutonium, the main ingredient of an atomic bomb, could be extracted from the reactor's waste fuel.

Ralph Nader, the American environmentalist, described the Canadian sale as "an act of criminal irresponsibility." Until then, two American companies, General Electric and Westinghouse, controlled 71 per cent of the world market in nuclear reactors. And because America had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the companies did their business under the fictional cover that the reactors were for peaceful purposes and that underdeveloped countries simply didn't know how to convert the waste fuel into a Bomb. Eager Once India's Bomb had exposed this pretence, the forces of free enterprise sprinted into action. Out there, in underfed and under-educated dictatorships, was a £3,500 million nuclear market." The German government was first off the mark, allowing the commercial sale of a German-made nuclear reactor and a re-processing plant to the military regime in other words, a do-it-yourself atomic bomb. Pakistan, eager to strike a balance of terror with India, was sold a reactor by the French, who also opened negotiations with the little Mussolinis in charge of Iran, South Korea, South Africa and Libya.

The Canadians, having recovered from the shock of the Indians' treachery in building a Bomb when they promised not to, quickly sent their salesmen off to Argentina and South Korea. The American nuclear industry is distraught. Today, nine out of ten nuclear export orders are going to non-American companies. Dr. Kissinger's creation, The London Suppliers Group, is meant to halt this "nuclear insanity and to curb "irresponsible profiteering by the Europeans and, of course, to get General Electric and Westinghouse their business back.

The Group's four principles are dressed up in high-tone morality. For example, 'Principle No. 2 urges its members not to sell reactors to countries without reassurances that they won't build a Bomb. (The kind of reassurance, no doubt, that the Indians gave to Canada.) Of course, these reassurances amount to the same sham as the Nuclear Non-Prdliferation Treaty and The secret, lethal Club of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, which allow America and Russia to build, on a tit-for-tat basis, more nuclear weapons than ever before, as well as the venerable Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which canned the Aldermaston marchers into furling their banners. have been more nuclear explosions since the Test Ban Treaty than there were before it.

Indeed, visitors to the Nevada gambling city of Las Vegas during the spring nuclear season invariably call their hotel switchboard to inquire why their room is shaking. It's just the H-Bombs over at the test site," they are Today and tomorrow the elite members of The London Suppliers Group will work diligently through an agenda of cynicism, hypocrisy and greed. The American member, Mr. George Vest, will express the concern of Washington about the irresponsible spread of nuclear weapons. The French member will report that President Giscard d'Estaing has tightened controls so that the South Koreans probably won't get their French of course, the responsible South Africans will get theirs.

Reason The British delegate will no doubt reiterate the stringent conditions Britain imposes on its nuclear unfortunately, amount to no more than those familiar, worthless reassurances." It is unlikely that the Club's members will discuss the fact that many of their customers, having made their Bomb, are incapable of disposing of nuclear waste without contaminating people and their land. It is also unlikely that the members will acknowledge that the real reason for the spread of nuclear weapons is the example set by themselves: the continuing arms race by the superpowers and the mindless commercial competition by the other nuclear exporters of the West. It is time we all saw inside The London Club. Its theatrical secrecy, like its trade, may well be lethal. Scotland Yard probe into a leak of Cabinet secrets took a farcical turn yesterday.

The secret findings of the Yard's Serious Crime Squad were LEAKED. News spilled out that the squad had failed to identify for certain the mysterious Deep Throat who leaked the Cabinet secrets. Only Premier James Callaghan was supposed to know the contents of the Yard report. But they were leaked by Frank Field. the charity boss who started the whole affair by publishing the Cabinet secrets last June.

Mr. Field was originally fed details of how the Cabinet turned down a scheme to give all child allowances direct to mothers. The Yard men trying to trace Deep Throat nicknamed after the famous Watergate informant questioned Cabinet Ministers, politi- 4 MR. LEAK: Frank Field A HUSH-HUSH From PETER STEPHENS in Paris THE KREMLIN is planning to make a sensational offer to help Concorde. Soviet leaders would allow the Anglo-French supersonic jet to fly over exchange for details on how it works.

The Russians are also prepared to persuade other Communist use their influence in the Third let Concorde in. Faults This could slash at least two hours off the flying time between London and Tokyo and open up the whole of the Far East to British Airways and Air France Concordes. Russian engineers built a replica of Concorde based on stolen plans of the French prototype. But they do not know how to correct faults which have develoned in Concordski. officially known as the Tupolev 144.

EEK THEY'RE OFF MICE racing is to be held weekly on a loft. track at the Miners Arms pub at Unstone, Derbyshire. DAILY MIRROR, Thursday, November 11, 1976 PAGE 7 LEAKED THE SECRET OF A CABINET LEAK not quite enough information to allow him to proceed with a criminal prosecution. In fact, the police have not found the person who let me see photo-copies of Cabinet papers. At no time during the inquiry did my contact feel threatened or believe that his or her identity was in danger of being found out by the police.

Mr. Field says that his latest leak came from someone with access to this sort of information." Now the leak about a leak is sure to start a new storm. Gale alert on prices HOUSEWIVES face a hurricane wave of price rises in the New a supermarket boss John Sainsbury warned yesterday. He predicted that food costs would soar by 20 per cent. The warning came as Prices Secretary Roy Hattersley told leaders that the Government was considering stricter price controls.

By ROGER TODD cal advisers and senior civil servants. Mr. Field, 33, who is director of the Child Poverty Action Group, said yesterday: 6 The police inquiry to trace my source has cost an enormous amount of got nowhere. The report to the Prime Minister by Commander Roy Habershon, head of the Serious Crime he is pretty certain of who was responsible. But he says there is They can afford to smile.

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