Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

To the Congress of the United States:

America's traditional optimism about the manageability of human affairs is being challenged, as never before, by a host of problems. In the field of national security, arms control offers a potential solution to many of the problems we currently face. The genius of the American people may be said to lie in their ability to search for and find practical solutions, even to the most difficult of problems; and it is no accident that this country has helped lead the world in the quest for international arms control agreements.

Safeguarding our national security requires a dual effort. On the one hand, we must maintain an adequate defense against potential great-power adversaries; for although we are pursuing a positive policy of detente with the Communist world, ideological differences and conflicting interests can be expected to continue. On the other hand, we share with them, as with the rest of the world, a common interest in a stable international community.

Over the past year, we have made considerable progress in our arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. The Vladivostok accord which I reached with Chairman Brezhnev will enable our two countries to establish significant limits on the strategic arms race and will set the stage for negotiations on reductions at a later phase. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. have, over the past year, also reached agreement on the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and on a limitation on ABM deployments to one complex for each country.

The negotiations being held at Vienna on mutual and balanced force reductions in Europe (MBFR), while they have not yet produced conclusive results, are also an important endeavor to limit and reduce armaments safely through mutual agreement. For our part, we shall make every effort to achieve such an outcome.

Even as we see some encouraging progress in our relations with the Soviet Union, we still face a growing danger in the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons to more countries. The U.S. will continue to seek practical steps to avert this danger, while providing the benefits of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The fourteenth annual report of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which I herewith transmit to the Congress, sets forth the steps which have been taken over the past year to meet these and other national security problems through arms control.

GERALD R. FORD

The White House,

March 3, 1975.