§ Lord Gainfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
What was their recent announcement on the Third Review Conference of the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention.
The Earl of CaithnessWe are pleased to say that on 27th September the Ambassador of the UK Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva announced at the Third Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention that Her Majesty's Government had decided to withdraw that part of our reservation to the 1925 Geneva Protocol which maintained our right to retaliate in kind if biological weapons were used against us. The protocol prohibits the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of bacteriological methods of warfare.