By PAUL LEWIS
William Epstein, a United Nations official involved in promoting disarmament for more than 20 years, died on Friday in New York. He was 88.
Mr. Epstein participated in negotiating pacts like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 and the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972.
In 1997 he took his last United Nations job, working until 1999 as an adviser to Ambassador Richard Butler, head of the special commission in charge of eliminating weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mr. Epstein was one of the first staff members at the United Nations. He worked with the preparatory commission that planned the world organization in London in 1945 before joining the secretariat the next year at its first temporary headquarters at Hunter College in Manhattan.
He worked with Ralph J. Bunche on the Special Committee on Palestine, which drew up a plan in 1947 to partition the territory into Jewish and Palestinian states without defined borders and with Jerusalem as an international city.
Rejected by the Arab world, the plan was approved the same year by the General Assembly, which led to the proclamation of the State of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war.
Then Mr. Epstein moved to disarmament, which became his passion. He became director of the United Nations Disarmament Divison and represented the secretary general at the 18-nation Disarmament Committee from 1962 to 1973 and later at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament. The work of the conferences led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and the Seabed Arms Control Treaty of 1971, as well as the Nonproliferation Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention.
Mr. Epstein also organized the Declaration on Peace and Disarmament signed by all living Nobel Peace Prize laureates and presented to the United Nations in 1970, on its 25th anniversary.
From 1965 to 1967, he represented the secretary general at the Commission for the Denuclearization of Latin America and helped draft the Treaty of Tlatelolco, creating a nuclear-free zone in Latin America and the Caribbean.
After retiring in 1972, Mr. Epstein was a senior fellow with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and until 1986, he was a disarmament and arms control consultant to the secretary general.
Mr. Epstein was born in Canada, and educated at the University of Alberta and the London School of Economics. In addition to articles, he published a standard reference work, "The Last Chance: Nuclear Proliferation and Arms Control."
Surviving are his wife, Edna, of Portland, Ore., and a son, Mark, of Washington.
(text of February 15, 2001 New York Times On The Web article)
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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