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HKG_083/1
Mr Mallaby (ACDD) 12 R
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30/1
Comprehensive Test Ban: National Seismic Stations
in the UK and Dependent Territories
The Secretary of State has seen your submission of 25 January and Mr Edmonds' comments thereon. He agrees to option b in paragraph 15 of the officials' paper Te that we should probe the Soviet position further7.
On costs, he would like to see some assessment of the savings to the MOD budget which will arise from a CTB. He would like to know how many tests we think the MOD had envisaged for the forthcoming three or five year period and what is the nature and size of the extra costs for maintaining stockpile safety and reliability referred to in paragraph 7 of your minute. He believes that it would be valuable if such costs and savings can be quantified in any paper put to Ministers rather than left, as in the present draft, in purely general terms.
Dr Owen would also like an assessment of the likely seriousness of the Soviet interest in having seismic stations in Hong Kong and on Pitcairn Island. Is it our intention to offer them purely technical arguments against these locations?
Dr Owen wonders also if one possible option on the question of costs might not be to tell the Russions that if they insist on having 10 seismic stations in the UK as well as 10 in the US, then they must pay for them all themselves, but that we might be prepared to consider a three-way split if the balance were more reasonable.
29 January 1979
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Page 45Page 46
Mr Edmonds
HKG.083/1
-2FEB 1979