ing periodic meetings such as I have mentioned lasting two or three months, would fill an obvious gap and would make a precious contribution to the work of the Assembly and assist it thus to carry out its responsibilities. Among other tasks, the conference would be called upon to scrutinize carefully the practical implementation of the resolutions of the General Assembly to make an objective assessment of the progress achieved in disarmament, to compare the respective advances in armaments and disarmament and to adopt any decisions which might be deemed advisable in the light of its investigations.

Since so far it has been impossible to achieve any progress in the ad hoc Committee, for more than two years in Geneva we have given our support to the idea of holding a special session of the General Assembly, and on 30 October last year in this same First Committee we stated that, if in the course of 1976 it was found impossible to achieve genuine progress on the convening of a world disarmament conference, it would be necessary for the General Assembly at this thirty-first regular session to agree to the holding of a special session in order to consider, among other urgent disarmament questions, the convening of a world disarmament conference.10

In the political declaration adopted at the Colombo Conference which was held in August last, the non-aligned nations recommended the convening of that special session to which I have referred "as early as possible and not later than 1978". In the same section of that declaration, section XVII, to which the delegation of Mexico was given an opportunity of making a modest contribution, it was recommended that the agenda for that session should include “a review of the problem of disarmament", "the promotion and elaboration of a programme of priorities and recommendations in the field. of disarmament" and "the question of convening a world disarmament conference".11

We are convinced that a decision on this matter brooks no further delay and that it is necessary for the General Assembly here and now to decide to hold a special session on disarmament. In doing so, it would be advisable for the Assembly to decide upon the most propitious place and time for that session. We personally would advocate that the session be held at United Nations Headquarters in New York and that the time be May or June 1978. We are sure that this schedule would allow sufficient time to poll all States on their opinions regarding the agenda and other matters pertinent to the convening of this special session. Furthermore, we believe that it would be highly desirable to establish immediately a preparatory committee which would be limited in membership but, obviously, sufficiently representative, and to call upon it to hold a brief organizational session at the beginning of next year, at which time it would set the dates for a substantive session, during which it would examine the views and

10 Documents on Disarmament, 1975, pp. 501–509.
"Ante, pp. 566–567.

comments received from Governments, as well as any working papers that the Secretary-General of the United Nations might have requested, as was the case with the Preparatory Committee for the Review Conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Statement by the British Representative (Goronwy-Roberts) to the First Committee of the General Assembly: Nuclear Weapons, Chemical Weapons, and Military Expenditures [Extract], November 2, 19761

Instead of trying to cover the whole disarmament field today, I intend to concentrate on three specific topics of great importance to the international community. They are: nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and world military expenditure. But it would be wrong to ignore other measures to be discussed here. In particular, we have before us two valuable results of hard work and constructive negotiation by representatives of many States. One is the draft treaty banning the use of environmental modification techniques in war 2 and the other the report on the role of the United Nations in disarmament. We hope that both of these will command the widest possible support.

3

We also have before us a proposal of interest to every Member of the United Nations: the holding of a special session of the Assembly devoted to disarmament. We believe that such a session, if properly prepared, could improve the prospects for multilateral disarmament negotiations. If the proposal is adopted we shall look forward to taking part in the preparations for the special session.^

Coming to my first theme, nuclear weapons, the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly in past years show that there is overwhelming support for measures to prevent the proliferation of nuclear explo sive devices and to stop the nuclear arms race. These were the main objectives of the most important arms control measure since the Second World War: the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

The Non-Proliferation Treaty places obligations both on States which have nuclear weapons and on those which do not have them. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, springing from article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are of course concerned with the strategic nuclear weapons of the United States and the Soviet Union. We wish

'General Assembly Official Records: Thirty-first Session, Supplement No. 36 (A/31/36).

the two Governments success in these crucial talks. Meanwhile it is essential that there should be no further spread of nuclear explosive devices. My Government has been much encouraged by recent ratification of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, especially that of Japan, the 100th nation to ratify and one with an extensive and advanced civil nuclear industry. Support for this Treaty remains the best way to build up the necessary confidence between nations, so as to avert a spread of nuclear weapons which could have appalling consequences for the whole world.

There are various ways in which the non-proliferation régime can be strengthened, without impairing the vigorous development of civil nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Since the last session of the Assembly and in the spirit of the Final Declaration of the Review Conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty,' the international community has taken important steps in the field of nuclear arms control.

First, a great deal of attention has rightly been given to the call by the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference for the strengthening of common export requirements related to safeguards and for according them the widest possible measure of acceptance by all suppliers and recipients. The British Government, like others with advanced nuclear industries, has been working to ensure that we have a fully responsible nuclear export policy. We believe that our policy, announced by Mr. James Callaghan on 31 March, will meet the two essential requirements: first, sheer inadvertence or the pressures of commercial competition must not lead to the spread of the capability of making nuclear explosive devices; and, second, the peaceful benefits of nuclear energy should be available to all States. This most important question was the subject of a very comprehensive and farsighted statement by the President of the United States on 28 October which my Government and, I am sure, many others will be considering with great care and attention."

8

Second, and right in line with the call for strengthening international safeguards, has been the preparation by the International Atomic Energy Agency of arrangements to enable States not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to accept Agency safeguards on all their civil nuclear facilities.10 It is increasingly important that the development of one country's civil nuclear power industry should not be interpreted by others, especially neighbouring countries, as a threat to their national security. General acceptance of comprehensive safeguards will foster international confidence that the spread of nuclear weapons is indeed being limited. My Government gives firm support to International Atomic Energy Agency activities in this field and will con

8 Ante, p. 167.

Ante, pp. 703-716.

19 Guidelines adopted by the IAEA Board of Governors with respect to safeguards arrangements in connection with the NPT can be found in Documents on Disarmament, 1971, pp. 218–244.

tinue to do all it can to ensure that the application of safeguards is simplified and made still more efficient. The United Kingdom, for its part, has voluntarily submitted to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards those parts of the British nuclear industry which support our civil nuclear programme. The agreement on this was signed in Vienna on 6 September." We hope that this and the simiis: United States voluntary offer will encourage other nuclear-weapon States to do likewise. We urge all non-nuclear-weapon States which have not yet done so to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty or, failing that, at the least to accept comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on all their civil nuclear activities, that is to say, safeguards on the full fuel cycle.

The third significant development in the field of nuclear arms control has been the association of many States with the Internationa! Atomic Energy Agency's Advisory Group studying peaceful nuclear explosions.12 That Group is preparing essential material on the technical and economic aspects of peaceful nuclear explosions, on the crucial issues of health and safety, on the important legal considerations which must be taken into account in drafting any international framework for the regulation of peaceful nuclear explosions. The Group is performing a most useful task, and it is right that the Internationa Atomic Energy Agency continue to examine this question thoroughly. The fourth step has been the bilateral Treaty governing Peaceful Nuclear Explosions recently concluded between the Soviet Union and the United States, limiting peaceful nuclear explosions to 150 kilotons. with important provisions for on-site inspection.13 This complements the threshold test-ban Treaty signed by those two countries in 1974.14 But, in offering our congratulations to the two Governments on the progress they have achieved, I recognize that those who have undertaken not to develop nuclear weapons naturally want such limitation agreements to be regarded as stages towards the goal of a comprehensive test ban treaty; and I entirely agree that we should press on with vigour towards that goal.

Consequently, we regard as important the fifth step, which was the decision by the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament to establish a group of governmental experts to study international cooperation in detecting and identifying seismic events.15 We are grateful to the Government of Sweden for its considerable work in making this proposal and developing it. Obviously seismic monitoring will

form a most important element of the verification machinery of any comprehensive test ban treaty. We regard the work of that Group as a useful way of exploring what form this machinery might take and how it might be established. We look forward to sharing with other experts in the Group our own experience in the field of remote seismic monitoring, and we hope the Group will be joined by experts from every part of the world. I would remind the Committee that membership of that Group is open to all States.

In working for a comprehensive test ban we should concentrate on finding solutions to the two outstanding problems: verification and peaceful nuclear explosions. We must face the fact that, whatever improvements are made in seismological techniques, there will remain a threshold below which detection and identification of an explosion cannot be assured, and that leaves scope for evasion. In this context we are most interested in that passage of the memorandum of the Soviet Union which suggests that a compromise is possible on the basis of-and here I quote the official translation:

a voluntary framework for taking decisions relating to on-site ascertaining of relevant circumstances.1

10

Yesterday Mr. Kuznetsov repeated that point in his speech,1 and we look forward to further exploration and elaboration of these ideas. There is also the problem of ensuring that peaceful nuclear explosions do not provide the opportunity for clandestine benefits in relation to nuclear weapons. There is continued need for study and research into seismic methods of detection and identification of underground events, and for further examination of the role of peaceful nuclear explosions in the context of a comprehensive test ban treaty.

I now turn to my second main theme, the prohibition of chemical weapons. They are weapons of terrible potential and we ignore them at our peril. Their use during the First World War inspired the humanitarian concern which led to the 1925 Geneva Protocol.18 That banned the first use in war of chemical and biological weapons against other States party, and it has been largely observed to this day.

Chemical weapons were not used during the Second World War, but several of the belligerents accumulated stocks. In one case these included agents many times more toxic than the chemical weapons used in the First World War. Since 1945, the British defence effort in this field has been devoted to protective measures-and even they will only be necessary as long as we have to reckon with the possession of chemical weapons by other States.

18 For text, see Documents on Disarmament, 1969, pp. 764–765.

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