§ Mr. Churchillasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further initiatives he intends to take to contribute to the Geneva chemical weapons negotiations.
§ Mr. LuceOn 17 April the leader of the United Kingdom delegation to the Geneva conference on disarmament tabled the latest in a series of working papers on the proposed chemical weapons convention. Earlier British proposals, the most recent of which I introduced at Geneva on 12 March, have addressed the harder issues of verification, in particular the non-diversion of certain industrial chemicals into secret military stockpiles.
The latest paper proposes the establishment of an effective executive body (the "Executive Council") empowered to take rapidly whatever action is necessary to ensure that existing stockpiles of weapons are destroyed, once the convention enters into force, and that doubts about compliance with the provisions of the convention are rapidly resolved. The paper also addresses other important institutional issues. These latest proposals are a further demonstration of the urgency we attach to reaching agreement on this important disarmament issue. I am arranging for a copy of the paper to be placed in the Library of the House.