Nuclear Disarmament (Hansard, 25 January 1984)

§ 13. Mr. Strang
asked the Secreary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what initiatives on nuclear disarmament he has supported in the United Nations in the past three years.

§ Mr. Luce
We remain committed to supporting, at the United Nations and elsewhere, initiatives from any quarter that are likely genuinely to advance the search for security through negotiated arms control and disarmament measures. Thus, over the past three years we have supported the United Nations General Assembly resolutions concerned with the prevention of nuclear war. the intermediate nuclear force negotiations and nuclear weapon-free zones.

§ Mr. Strang
Is the Minister aware of how appalling the Government's overall record is in opposing so many major nuclear disarmament initiatives at the United Nations? How, for example, do the Government justify voting against a motion for the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests?

§ Mr. Luce
I would say to the hon. Gentleman that he is absolutely wrong to suggest that the British Government have not been constructive in appraching the resolutions, not only in the last three years, but in the last year, that have come before the United Nations General Assembly. The criteria we adopt when we examine resolutions are whether they are likely to lead to a positive prospect of arms control agreements, and that means that they must be verifiable and they must be balanced. We look at the langauge of each resolution with those criteria in mind. That surely is the most sensible approach.

§ Mr. Wilkinson
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in the unlikely event of the French proposal for an international satellite monitoring agency under UN aegis being implemented, some of the first pictures brought back will be of continued Soviet SS20 launch site construction? Is this not a very serious matter and the sort of thing to which the United Nations should address itself?

§ Mr. Luce
I agree with my hon. Friend that verification is one of the key aspects of making any progress on arms control agreements, and any evidence of abuse of that in previous agreements does not help the process. What we must hope is that the Soviet Union will now fulfil what Mr. 909 Andropov is reported to have suggested, and that is that the Soviet Union would like to see progress in arms control. The most sensible way in which it can prove that is to come back to the talks in Geneva, and the sooner the better.

§ Mr. Healey
Since, according to the Foreign Secretary yesterday, Her Majesty's Government do not dispute the findings of the world's leading scientists that both the super powers now have at least 100 times more nuclear explosives than they could use without destroying their own people—never mind what those explosives did to the enemy — will the Government now support the demand of the overwhelmingly majority of the United Nations for a freeze of development and deployment of nuclear weapons so that at least countries cannot continue adding yet more dangerous nuclear weapon to stockpiles that are grossly excessive for any conceivable military or political purpose?

§ Mr. Luce
Of course the right hon. Gentleman is right. We all want to see an end to the escalation of the arms race. What really matters, if I may suggest this to the right hon. Gentleman, is not a freeze, but an actual reduction. This is what we have been proposing; indeed, this is what President Reagan has been proposing. If one goes for the policy of suggesting that we should have freezes, in many cases—in the case of intermediate nuclear weapons—one is ossifying an imbalance in weapons, in this case a monopoly on the part of the Soviet Union. There is, therefore, no incentive for reductions. What we want to work for is reductions, not freezing, of weapons.