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Short-Range Nuclear Weapons

Volume 174: debated on Wednesday 13 June 1990

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3.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next intends to discuss the future of short-range nuclear weapons with the United States Secretary of State.

I met Mr. Baker and other NATO colleagues at the North Atlantic Council meeting held at Turnberry on 7 and 8 June. NATO agreed at that meeting that negotiations on United States and Soviet short-range nuclear weapons systems in Europe should begin shortly after a conventional forces in Europe agreement is concluded.

We shall continue to keep in close touch with the United States on this subject as we prepare for the NATO summit in London from 4 to 6 July.

Does the Foreign Secretary accept that the best thing to do with these relics of the cold war would be to return them to the United States of America? If he is not prepared to do that, will he tell the House against whom he anticipates the weapons ever being deployed?

My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) mentioned the problems in the middle east. As so many nasty regimes in that area still possess very nasty weapons, would not it be a mistake for us to throw down our arms at this stage?

What we agreed at Turnberry—as has been agreed many times before and as will be agreed many times in the future—is that the 16 NATO allies need an appropriate and sensible mix of nuclear and conventional forces at the lowest level consistent with our security needs. That mix of forces, under an integrated command, is designed to deter attack on our area from any quarter.

Can the right hon. Gentleman explain how it was that a few days before President Bush announced that there would be no modernisation of short-range nuclear weapons, the Prime Minister was alone in NATO in continuing to advocate the modernisation of such weapons? Will he ask the Prime Minister to stop doing what she was doing yesterday—that is, jabbering on about the NATO flexible response strategy, given that the intermediate nuclear forces treaty and the American decision not to modernise short-range weapons mean that that strategy is dead?

Not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman is confusing two issues. He is confusing the follow-on to Lance, which is what President Bush has abandoned—he consulted my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in Bermuda before making the announcement—and the general position of NATO, which my right hon. Friend continues to emphasise. I do not know what the Labour party's position is, but our position is the one that I have just stated: we need a sensible mix of conventional and nuclear weapons, including weapons below the strategic level, to protect our security.