a279  1703  11 Nov 76
AM-Rostow, 490
By W. DALE NELSON
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - A committee including Cabinet members from four
previous administrations urged Thursday that President-elect Jimmy
Carter increase defense spending to arrest what a spokesman called a
''slide toward war.''
    Formation of the Committee on the Present Danger was announced at a
news conference presided over by Eugene V. Rostow, former
undersecretary of state for political affairs and 8hairman of the
group's executive committee.
    ''For the United States to be free, secure and influential, higher
levels of spending are now required for our ready land, sea and air
forces, our strategic deterrent, and above all, the continuing
modernization of those forces through research and development,'' the
committee said in a policy statement.
    The statement said the United States was endangered by a ''Soviet
drive for dominance based upon an unparallelled military buildup.''
    ''Sooner or later that kind of pressure induces a sense of panic
which could lead to war,'' Rostow said. ''We are trying to influence
policy in time to head off that slide toward war.''
    The committee did not recommend a specific level of spending.
    David Packard, deputy secretary of defense in the Nixon
administration, indicated a hike of 2 to 4 per cent in real spending,
after inflation is taken into account, would be enough.
    Paul H. Nitze, who served as secretary of the Navy under the late
President Lyndon B. Johnson, said, ''I think the need is greater''
than 2 to 4 per cent. Nitze is an adviser to Carter.
    Rostow said the committee had not contacted the President-elect. He
said the committee's recommendations contained ''nothing
incompatible'' with Carter's assertion that he would trim $5 billion
to $7 billion from the defense budget ''by reducing the waste and
fat'' in it.
    Reporters arriving at the news conference were handed a statement by
the U.S. Labor party saying that former Secretary of Defense James R.
Schlesinger, fired by President Ford, was a ''core organizer'' of the
committee and the committee was seeking to restore him to the defense
post.
    Rostow denied that. He said Schlesinger has taken an active interest
in the formation of the group but has not decided whether to join.
    Members of the committee include former Secretary of the Treasury
John B. Connally, a Nixon appointee, and C. Douglas Dillon, who served
in the same post by appointment of the late President John F.
Kennedy.
    Others include Gordon Gray, secretary of the Army under the late
President Harry S. Truman, and Dean Rusk, who was secretary of state
under Kennedy and Johnson.
    Charls E. Walker, former under secretary of the treasury and
treasurer of the committee, said it had raised about $75,000 from 40
contributors, much of it from members of the group's executive
committee.
    The committee said it would conduct conferences, provide speakers
and publish pamphlets.
    
2001pES 11-11
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