§ 11.13 a.m.
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the deployment of the cruise missile would invalidate existing arms control agreements and render it difficult if not impossible to reach any future agreements with the Soviet Union.
§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Belstead)My Lords, no. The deployment of cruise missiles in Western Europe would invalidate no existing arms control agreement. NATO proposals at the INF talks in Geneva have been for an agreement which would eliminate this class of missile altogether. But it is NATO's determination to deploy cruise missiles if necessary which has brought the Soviet Union to negotiate.
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, is the noble Lord aware that while all this is going on, the risks of unintentional nuclear war, referred to in a United Nations report, are with us all the time? Is he aware that the deployment of cruise missiles at the end of this year would sharply increase the probability of nuclear 274 war in 1984? Finally, is he aware that, in these circumstances, the Prime Minister's dismissal of Mr. Andropov's latest proposal is suicidally irresponsible?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, the fact of the matter is that we are in a situation now when it is up to the Russians. The allies have made clear all along that what we want to do is to remove these terrible weapons from the whole European theatre altogether. That is the zero option which remains our ultimate objective. Since then, the Americans have put forward an interim proposal to limit the number of warheads on these INF missiles. The Russians are therefore now being asked what level of these terrible weapons they would accept in Europe. We now await a reply from them.
§ Lord BishopstonMy Lords, will the Minister look at cruise in relation to general defence policy? Did he see in the Church Times or maybe elsewhere, last week that a meeting of Church leaders from over 60 countries expressed serious views about nuclear policy, as did the clergy and the bishops of the United States? Will the noble Lord suggest to his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence that he may be surrounded by "cannons" to the left of him, as he often suspects, and by "cannons" to the right of him, and that it is about time he reviewed his policies in the light of the views of the Church leaders? Will he also suggest to his right honourable friend that he should not do what he often does and discard almost anything that does not agree with his preconceived ideas?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, the noble Lord mentions the Church Times. The noble Lord knows better than I that the Synod voted for multilateral disarmament to try to reach security and peace for the future through that channel. That is the way. The Government are trying to secure it.
§ Lord GladwynMy Lords, will the Government insist on their view that British and French nuclear forces are not in practice intermediate weapons in exactly the same sense as the SS20s in Russia?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, if one tries to go down that track, there are two immediate difficulties. The first is that the talks between the Russians and the Americans in the INF negotiations in Geneva have always been accepted as bilateral negotiations. That was the wish of both sides. It would mean changing the rules in the middle of the negotiations to breach that. Secondly, if those independent deterrents were brought into the negotiations, the effect would be to grant the Soviet Union, one of the two negotiators, superiority over the United States. That is not a very good start to that particular démarche.
§ Lord Orr-EwingMy Lords, will my noble friend say whether the CND—or the voice of CND in this House as represented by Lord Jenkins of Putney—has made any representations to the Soviet Union about the deployment of its 320 SS20s? Is there any evidence that the Russians have radically cut down their S4s and S5s in addition to the SS20s deployed over the last three years?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, that, if I may say so, is a good question. May I give a general answer? People often talk at the moment about a moratorium or a freeze. If that happened, we would be freezing the number of intermediate land-based nuclear missiles in Europe targeted upon each of our countries in the free world at about 4 to 1 in favour of the Soviet Union. In fact, so far as land-based missiles are concerned, none is held by the West at all. Meanwhile, as my noble friend's question brings out, the Russians have been continuing to deploy SS20s and are not applying any idea or a moratorium to the Asian regions of the USSR.
§ Baroness GaitskellMy Lords, may I ask the Minister why President Reagan and the Americans have not got the jitters, as we have, about the Russians having more missiles than we have? Is that really proven? I do not believe it.
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, the noble Baroness's question brings us hack to the original Question. It is because the West is concerned about the enormous build-up both in intermediate range weapons in the East and also strategic weapons in the East that the allies have put forward proposals that there shall he no intermediate range weapons at all in Europe and that there shall be very deep cuts in the interballistic monsters that both sides hold. I repeat that it is now up to the Russians. We want to know if they will agree to no intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe. If they will not agree to that, what number will they agree to?
§ Baroness GaitskellMy Lords, unless we can trust them a bit, where are we going to get to? There is this constant mistrust with Russia. After all, there was a time when we were allies in the First World War. So it is a possibility. It must be.
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, the concern of the noble Baroness about mistrust is, of course, well placed. All that the allies can do is to negotiate in good faith while remaining strong and vigilant.
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, is the noble Lord aware that each side believes itself to be outnumbered by the other and that each side is perfectly capable of putting up a good case, provided that it is sufficiently selective about the particular type of weapons which it is matching with those of the other side? But international comparison suggests that overall, taking into account all the weapons, there is a rough equality. As regards the question raised by the noble Lord, the Minister might well have replied that he was not in a position to answer for the CND. But the answer to the question is that I—
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, is the Minister aware that the answer to the question is that I myself have raised the question of the SS20 in the Kremlin with Mr. Yuri Zhukov and I received a very courteous and lengthy reply from Mr. Zhukov to the effect that as far as the Soviet Union is concerned—
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, does not the noble Lord want the answer to the question? Perhaps I can put it in an interrogative form. I am bringing my sentence to a close. Is the Minister aware, therefore, that in these circumstances, since the answer of the Soviet Union to this question is that all weapons should be counted, the Government must take into consideration all the weapons which are likely to fall on Soviet soil?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, the answer to all that the noble Lord has just been saying is very simple indeed. Let both sides agree that there shall be no intermediate range missiles, land-based, targeted on any of the countries in Europe—namely, the zero option—and then the people of both Western Europe and the East can live in peace.