§ Mr. Terlezkiasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what initiatives he is contemplating for verification of nuclear and conventional arms control agreements with the Soviet Union; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. RentonThe United Kingdom is not a party to the Geneva nuclear and space talks, but we fully support the United States proposals that agreements on reductions in INF and START should provide for adequate verification including on-site inspection where necessary.
Allied policy on all aspects of conventional arms control is currently being studied within the NATO high level task force set up at the Halifax ministerial meeting last May. At the mutual and balanced force reductions talks the current Western proposals, which provide for the verification of both reductions and the resultant levels of conventional forces in central Europe, was a United Kingdom initiative. In Stockholm, at the Conference on Disarmament in Europe (CDE), we had prime responsibility within the Western group for the successful negotiations of detailed measures providing for on-site inspection: the first such measures in an arms control agreement.
We have taken a number of verification initiatives in the negotiations for a chemical weapons ban. We will be continuing to discuss these with the Soviet Union, but we will be pressing in particular for agreement on a recent British initiative on the most crucial verification issue of challenge inspection.