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3. We have kept in close touch with the Home Office and
MOD in deciding how to respond to these requests.
It was
agreed that there would be little benefit to cither side in
simply handing over the grenades. The effectiveness of counter-
terrorist arrangements depends on a wide range of skills.
Properly training and equipment are both important and so are
the administrative arrangements, police command and control,
negotiating techniques, intelligence and communications.
To help other countries in developing their contingency plans
we need to draw their attention to all relevant elements of
planning, rather than encourage them to believe that a single
item of equipment solves all the problems. Given that the
terrorist threat is world-wide, and can damage a variety of
British interests at home and abroad, it seems worthwhile trying
to raise standards of counter-terrorist measures wherever we can.
4.
We had to take account of the fact that the manpower
available to the MOD, Police and other relevant Government Depart-
ments is already stretched to meet the task of developing our
own counter-terrorist arrangements. For example the SAS have
some training capacity but certainly not enough to meet all the
requests.
5.
Accordingly, it was decided that a seminar at Bramshill
at which we would describe the basic principles of handling a
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/terrorist
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