Mr. O'NeillTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether any assessment has been made of the cost of verifying(a) a world de chemcial weapons ban and (b) a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation/Warsaw Pact chemical weapons ban.
§ Mr. WaldegraveWe remain committed to negotiating a global, effectively verifiable ban on CW, but until the verification regime has been further elaborated, it is not possible to make detailed estimates of the verification costs of any CW convention. A British Government paper presented to the conference on disarmament last year (Making the Chemical Weapons Ban Effective: CD 769) expressed the view that the costs of implementing a global CW convention were unlikely to be less than for the current IAEA budget.