FÜRKIGI SBC.
QUESTION:
-7-
A two part question.
You have expressed impatience about the way NATO is tackling
its own position on conventional arms.
Are you also impatient
about the pace at which the comprehensive arms concept is being
developed and is it good enough simply to have what appears to be an
interim report in December?
And on a more specific point, Mr. Shevardnadze has now outlined the new Soviet proposals for conventional arms, for
tackling the negotiations; do you have any reaction for that yet at
all?
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
On the second point, I have not obviously yet had a chance of studying the whole of Mr. Shevardnadze's speech but if one reads that together with the statements by Mr. Gorbachev on the 30 May, I think, as I said in my statement, there are some possibly
encouraging signs, namely
arms control discussions
-
I am looking now at the conventional
the explicit acknowledgement of the
importance of verification, the acknowledgement
so it seems
+
of
the legitimacy of asymmetrical reductions and the acknowledgement again so it seems that asymmetrical reductions need to be made ahead of any further across-the-board reductions.
We shall have to
see how far those are fleshed out in the detailed negotations, but
those are the things I am looking at.