§ Mr. Michael McNair-Wilsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affars if he will list the various disarmament or arms limitation talks currently in existence at which representatives of East and West are present; and if he will give a brief description of each and list the ones in which Her Majesty's Government have a direct involvement.
§ Mr. Hurd:The Government are indirectly involved, through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, in the two sets of bilateral United States-Soviet negotiations taking place in Geneva for reductions in the levels of strategic and intermediate nuclear forces—the strategic arms reduction talks and intermediate nuclear forces talks.
The Government are directly involved in
- (i) the talks on mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) taking place in Vienna with the object of reducing and limiting conventional forces in Europe;
- (ii)the work of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva which has set up five working groups to discuss verification of a comprehensive test ban, a ban on chemical weapons, a ban on radiological weapons, security assurances by nuclear weapon States to non-nuclear weapon States and a comprehensive programme of disarmament;
- (iii) the review meeting of the conference on security and co-operation in Europe (CSCE) which is due to reconvene on 9 November.