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sympathies lay with the West, but they did not belong to any of the
Western families. Ministerial speeches always referred to EC, NATO,
the Commonwealth and even the Warsaw Pact, but they never mentioned
the European neutrals. The PUS agreed that we should do more to
take account of such sensitivities. Mr Brunner remarked that the
neutrals were each in very different circumstances, and two or three
of them were subject to significant pressures from the Soviet
Union.
Afternoon session
Terrorism
22. Mr Brunner said that the Swiss would welcome information on any
EC discussions on combatting terrorism: an area also covered by the Council of Europe. Spain was also interested. The PUS said that
terrorism was under discussion in several fora, and referred to the
London and Bonn declarations by the Summit Seven states. He alluded
to the problems of terrorism in Lebanon (a British hostage,
Leslie Collett) and London (the Dicko affair). Mr Brunner recalled
that an Armenian was in jail in Switzerland for the murder of the
Turkish Consul in Geneva. Sentenced to 15 years, he might with
remission be freed after 10, but was only half way through that
sentence.
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Mr Brunner was to visit Athens on 8 October, when he
would discuss terrorism with Greek officials. He detected signs of
a new Greek effort to improve security procedures after the hijacking of the TWA airliner to Beirut.
Human Rights
23. Referring back to earlier discussion concerning the Council of
Europe, Mr Dain said that as regards human rights procedures the UK
found itself in a different position from other member states. It
had no written constitution and had not incorporated the European
Convention into UK law. We nevertheless recognised the right of
individual petition to the Commission and a number of cases had gone against us in the Court. Because of this the idea of making changes to the human rights machinery in a way that could reduce
the influence of the Committee of Ministers was sensitive in
domestic political terms and we did not favour it.
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