They won't initiate N-use, Soviets vow at UN parley

The Soviet Union pledged Tuesday not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.

President Leonid Brezhnev made the promise in a message read for him by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at a special UN session on disarmament. In his own statement, Mr. Gromyko said the Soviet Union was submitting to the UN session a draft convention banning the development, production, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and on their destruction. Though the Kremlin has said it before, this was the first time it used an international forum to make a public vow.