TNAG-1341-FCO40-17721-Visit-by-Margaret-Thatcher--UK-Prime-Minister--to-Beijing-fo-1985 — Page 80

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QUESTION

Prime Minister, there seems to have been a

distinction drawn by your Government between support for

research of space defence systems and support for testing

or eventual deployment of such systems. The Administration,

through its spokes-people has made it clear, and through the

Secretary of Defence, that it supports both those concepts,

eventual deployment and support for testing as well as

research. Do you support both, or just research?

PRIME MINISTER

I think you will find that question is dealt with in

the four points which I gave you.

First, you have to do the research as

atter of

balance. I indicated that the Soviet Union has already done

some research and, indeed, she has already got an anti-satellite

satellite capability and, as you know, she has done a great

deal of research on lasers and electronic pulse beams, and also,

as you know, she appears to have some very special radars and

has not, in fact, let us have the results of some of her

nuclear testing, in accordance with agreement. So she has

gone ahead on some of these matters and United States has to

do research as a matter of balance, otherwise the Soviet Union

would get ahead.

If the

Now, research is within existing agreements.

result of research is such that it is decided to go ahead with

production and deployment, that has to be a matter for

negotiation before those deployments could take place, because