
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 14, 1995                   TAG: 9510160038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LONDON                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE CONDEMNS NUKES

The Nobel Peace Prize became a weapon Friday against nations that own and test nuclear arms. In a signal to world leaders, the award went to British physicist Joseph Rotblat and the anti-nuclear group he helped found.

Rotblat, who started a campaign against nuclear weapons 40 years ago with Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, said the Nobel Peace Prize is recognition of work still in progress.

``I see this honor not for me personally but rather for the small group of scientists who have been working for 40 years to try to save the world, often against the world's wish,'' the 86-year-old physicist told a news conference Friday. ``I hope that more scientists will now be encouraged to think really seriously about the social impact of their work.''

The Nobel committee made it clear the award was also a signal to France and China to stop their atomic weapons tests.; Rotblat called the tests ``an outrage.''

Rotblat, a native of Poland, helped the United States build the world's first atomic bomb, but quit the Manhattan Project in 1944 when he overheard a general saying its real purpose was to subdue the Soviet Union - not to deter Nazi Germany.

When atomic bombs were dropped on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a year later, he said, ``I felt angry, and fear for the future of our civilization.''

Rotblat began work mobilizing scientists to get rid of the nuclear nightmare they had created.

``We have to learn to think in a new way,'' said a manifesto signed in 1955 by 11 distinguished scientists.

This declaration became the basis for an international conference of scientists in 1957 in the village of Pugwash on the coast of Nova Scotia, the first of hundreds of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which quietly pushed for arms accords between East and West to reduce nuclear weapons.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to call off the arms race ``was to a large extent influenced by our work. And this is one of the reasons that we deserve this prize,'' Rotblat said.

by CNB