§ Mr. Greville Janner(1) asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) whether Her Majesty's Government will endeavour at the United Nations to restore in the Convention for the Elimination of Biological and Toxic Weapons the absolute prohibition against use whereby the reservations to the Geneva Protocol, 1925, would have been removed;
(2) whether Her Majesty's Government will endeavour at the United Nations to restore in the Convention for the Elimination of Biological and Toxic Weapons provision for the automatic fact-finding investigation by the Secretary-General in case of complaint that biological weapons have been used against a state.
§ Mr. GodberThe draft convention on the prohibition of the development, production, and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxic weapons and on their destruction, which was negotiated in the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament covers much the same ground as the original British draft put forward in 1969, although it stems directly from a Soviet redraft tabled in March of this year. The main difference between the two drafts was that the British version incorporated an express prohibition of use and a complaints procedure directed against use involving the United Nations Secretary-General. The major British effort in the negotiations on the convention in the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament this year has, in fact, been to try to ensure that 233W the instrument eventually agreed would cover the question of use of biological weapons. It is a measure of our success that the final draft convention goes a considerable way to meet our wishes.
Her Majesty's Government believe that the draft convention, which has now been referred to the United Nations General Assembly, is the best available compromise in the circumstances, and we hope that it will be endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly and opened for signature at an early date. Attempts to re-open its wording at this stage could jeopardise these objectives.