United States Arms-Control Specialist Charles Norton Van Doren Dies

Mr. Van Doren joined the new U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1962. He served initially in the Office of General Counsel before becoming the agency's assistant director. He worked on the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other international agreements designed to block the spread of nuclear weapons.

After retiring from government service in 1981, he was principal consultant on nonproliferation for Fairfax Couny-based Ogden Environmental and Energy Services.

He wrote articles, was involved with the publication of a book on arms control for the Council on Foreign Relations and taught seminars on nuclear energy law at Georgetown University.

In a 1981 report for the Arms Control Association, a private nonprofit group, he wrote that Israel's destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad a few months earlier had subverted international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons and "only invites retaliation."

He concluded there was no evidence that Iraq was trying to develop or manufacture a nuclear explosive device.

In a 1986 letter to the editor of the New York Times, he said he had dedicated his 19-year government career to heading off the spread of nuclear weapons, and he expressed his opposition to the Reagan administration's decision to continue nuclear weapons testing. The administration had taken the position that a comprehensive test ban treaty would increase the risk of proliferation.

"Can the administration seriously believe that if there were a comprehensive test ban our North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Asian allies would decide to abandon the nonproliferation treaty and develop their own nuclear weapons as a consequence?" he wrote. "No one seriously versed in the field believes that they would respond in that way."