§ 66. Mr. E. Fletcherasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress has been made by the Disarmament Committee towards accepting the United States proposals for limiting further tests of atomic weapons and agreeing to an area of mutual inspection of bases.
§ The Minister of State, Foreign Affairs (Mr. David Ormsby-Gore)I do not at present, wish to add to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on 28th May about the progress of the disarmament negotiations.
§ Mr. FletcherDoes the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the public are vitally interested in, if a little baffled by, the proceedings of the Disarmament Commission? Would he agree that the best prospects for disarmament appear to reside in an agreement for the limitation of nuclear tests plus an agreement for mutual inspection of all weapons of warfare?
§ Mr. Ormsby-GoreOf course, those are two major considerations. It may well be that the negotiations in the subcommittee are rather baffling, but I do not think it makes the position any clearer to suggest, as this Question does, that the United States have put forward proposals limited to either the limitation of tests or simply to agreeing areas of mutual inspection. Both those proposals form part of a much larger scheme of disarmament and of inspection.