Amital Etzioni, a professor at the Columbia Institute of War and Peace Studies, said last night that West Germany is close to possessing control over nuclear weapons.

Speaking informally to an audience in Lowell House Junior Common Room, the founder of the Gradualist Way to Peace movement charged that a proposed European Multilateral Force would eventually give the Germans a finger on the trigger of nuclear war-heads in the 25 Polaris submarines sold to the MLF.

Etzioni spoke in detail on the operations of the MLF, and stressed the idea that the European nations involved have shown very little enthusiasm for a joint weapons system in which the Americans exercise veto power. As a result, a clause may be introduced into the treaty agreement which will allow the Europeans to buy out the American veto. Control over the nuclear fleet might then pass to a federation of nations, Etzioni speculated.

This federation, he charged, would actually be a committee in which voting power would be based on monetary contributions to the MLF. Thus West Germany, which has paid 67 per cent of the cost of maintaining the fleet, would exercise do facts control over a tactical nuclear force.