§ Q3. Mr. Adley asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his forthcoming visit to the USSR.
§ The Prime MinisterAs my hon. Friend will have seen from the communiqué published after the visit to the Soviet 1601 Union by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, I hope to take up the Soviet Government's invitation in the coming year.
§ Mr. AdleyI realise why my right hon. Friend has had to postpone his visit to China, but will he ensure that before he goes to Russia he rearranges the date of his visit to China, because I suspect that the Chinese Government are putting more store on his visit to China than the Russian Government are on his visit to Russia?
§ The Prime MinisterNo date has yet been considered with the Soviet Government, but I welcome the improvement in relations which has taken place between the two countries. Mr. Gromyko has accepted an invitation to come here in 1974, and I look forward to going to the Soviet Union in the course of the year. As for China, I have been in communication with Mr. Chou En-lai about the possibility of a future date.
§ Mr. John MendelsonWill the Prime Minister represent to the leaders of the Soviet Government the fact that there is widespread support in the House and outside for the security conference in Geneva, in the hope that it will lead to firm proposals linked to the Vienna Conference on reductions in the numbers of troops? Will he make clear that the people who have worked for years for this security conference would be gravely disappointed if there were not also success in the Third Commission, which deals with human freedom and the increase in free communications between people in East and West?
§ The Prime MinisterThese were the precise matters considered by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary with Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Podgorny during my right hon. Friend's visit to Moscow. In particular, he emphasised the last point of the hon. Member's question, with which we in the Government are in complete agreement.
§ Miss Joan HallFurther to the question asked by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) about human freedom, will my right hon. Friend, when he next meets the leaders of the USSR, raise with them the rights of minority religions in Russia to prac- 1602 tise their faiths, because, although the Jews have hit the headlines, there is another cruelly harassed minority, namely, the Baptists?
§ The Prime MinisterWe are able to discuss these matters, as I have just mentioned, in the context of the security conference and the Third Commission because our two countries are taking part. It is not possible for us to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union, but at the same time my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary thought it right to point out to Mr. Gromyko that the policy pursued in this respect, although entirely a matter for the Soviet Union, has an impact outside Russia, and particularly on public opinion here.
§ Mr. LiptonThe Prime Minister keeps talking about what he is going to do in the coming year. Will he have time to visit both China and Russia before the next General Election?
§ The Prime MinisterI hope to have time to visit both China and Russia in 1974.