I am grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne) for curtailing his speech. I know that some hon. Members have had to exercise the self-denying ordinance requested by the Chair, despite the late hour at which the debate is being concluded.

There is no doubt that, across the wide range of subjects that have been discussed in the debate, what dominates world affairs in 1986 is the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. There have been many changes. In Washington we have had a new unilateralist style of foreign policy, with all the attendant electric shocks to NATO that go along with abandoning SALT 2, the raid on Libya, the deployment of chemical weapons and the gearing up of the strategic defence initiative planning has come in. In the Kremlin, a new leadership is promoting almost every week new initiatives and proposals, ranging from conventional troop cuts to test ban verification, even to the elimination of all nuclear weapons by the end of the century. Even without these new dimensions, the superpower relationship would dominate world events, as it has for the past 30 to 40 years.

The genuine difficulty that faces the non-superpowers in both the West and the East is to know how at a time of almost unique danger, when new breeds of weapons systems could open up vastly more dangerous scenarios, to assist the superpowers to live with each other, to talk to each other and to reach decisions together in this increasingly constricted world.

During the last two years there has been a transformation of our view of world problems. Whatever the ideological divide, which is still very deep, and whatever the potential for escalation and proliferation, which remains staggeringly great, both sides seem to be more willing than they have been for many years to talk to each other and to compete for the command of world opinion rather than to rattle sabres and command military superiority. For that we must be grateful.

Last year's Reagan-Gorbachev summit was an enormous boost to the hope that agreement might be possible. The underlying relationship that was forged there seems to have prevented the worst of the misunderstandings that have characterised superpower relations in the last 15 years. It was good that this afternoon the Foreign Secretary was able to announce that the much-postponed visit of the Soviet Foreign Minister is to take place at an early date.

For many years the superpower dialogue on arms control has been bogged down in the capitals of Europe and we have grown used to inactivity. There were 13 years of mutual and balanced force reduction talks in Vienna, and there have been endless years of talks at the disarmament conference in Geneva. None of them has produced concrete results. Now there appears to be a flicker of hope, as new suggestions are made and as old objections seem to be of less consequence. Slowly, in all the different forums in which these matters are discussed, there seems to be a spluttering into life of one sort or another. However, there is a proliferation problem. Because so many talks are taking place on so many subjects and on so many overlapping areas, the result is that, in such a complex area, fine words and sentiments from the top people take far too long to be translated into detail and to reach the negotiating table.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and the hon. Members for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) told us this afternoon about their visit to the Soviet Union as members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. They underlined very clearly the fact that at the top of the negotiating ladder there are clear ideas about the direction in which the superpowers wish to go, but we have yet to see concrete results in terms of rhetoric and those fine intentions at the negotiating table. Indeed, the enthusiasm of Mr. Gorbachev for more and more initiatives has had the effect of confusing both the United States of America and his own negotiators. Both of them seem to be incapable of keeping track of his latest initiatives.

The new Soviet obsession with public relations and its desire, perhaps, to out-act the old actor in the White House tends to devalue the merit of some of the suggestions. For example, it was suggested after Chernobyl that there should be yet another summit. It was Mr. Gorbachev's third summit suggestion this year. The fact that agreement on the main summit meeting had not been reached meant that this suggestion looked like a diversionary gimmick. This impression was reinforced by the suggestion that this particular summit meeting should be held in Hiroshima. Glosses such as these detracted from the sensible points about co-operation on civil nuclear power that were made at the same time.

The shocks that were administered to us by the United States' raid on Libya and by its more recent decision to abondon SALT 2 betray a deep Division among the allies and disarray in the United States and in the Administration of that country. As my right hon. Friend so ably said, it is not to be percieved as being anti-American to express a view in Britain that is being openly and in increasing volume expressed in the United States.

There is a crisis in the Atlantic Alliance and it is not neutralist or anti-American to note it and to regret it. The crisis arises partly from the distance from the last war, whose ruinous tragedies hound together the NATO countries after it. Our electorates in the West are now, like myself and many other Members of the House, of the Majority of our population who were born after the end of the second world war. There is, whether we like it or not, a declining interest in and consciousness of the seeds of that conflict and the adhesive that was invented in the late 1940s to prevent it happening, again.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) made an impassioned speech thus evening about the election of Dr. Kurt Waldheim to the presidency of Austria. He made points which deserve answering, not just in the international context where President Waldheim will find himself, and possibly find himself profoundly uncomfortable, but about the British Government providing access to documents which should now be within the public domain but which apparently are being denied to us for reasons that cannot readily be understood. I hope that those Ministers who listened to his speech this evening, a speech of great power, will take on board the points that he made and will come forward with the answers which the House would expect.

I do not necessarily see the election of Dr. Waldheim, in a country which has more than due cause to be grateful for the post-war settlement, as a step into the past or a rejection of world criticism. It is perhaps a reflection of the same trends that we see in the West, of a rejection of the values and standards and memories of the second world war. Although we may regret the decision of the Austrian people, it was a decision taken within a democracy and is therefore one which we in the outside world will have to accept.

There is also a crisis in our Alliance because interests here have changed. The political activist in the West is more interested in world famine than in any possible Soviet invasion; more concerned about Chernobyl than the Krasnoyarsk phased array radar, and far more worked up about famine in Africa, which exists a plane journey away from all the wealth of our countries, than in the size of Russia's tank battalions.

Even in the Federal Republic of Germany a couple of weeks ago a respected opinion poll for a newspaper there showed that there was a greater measured concern in the population over the Chernobyl nuclear accident than there was in 1961 at the building of the Berlin wall.

Opinions, and values are changing, and recently the new American ambassador to Bonn expressed views about the possibility of the Americans going home and the reunification of the continent that would have been heresy had they been expressed only a few years ago.

There is also a crisis in the Alliance because of the behaviour, so often seen as inexplicable, and emotional and reckless, in our western European countries of the major and dominant partner in the Alliance, the United States. Indeed, as has been said by a number of hon. Members in the debate, there is a genuine concern about the way in which the present Administration of the United States conduct their foreign policy, which seems to fail to take into account the sincerely held views of their allies and supporters.

Anti-Americanism is rife in Europe and it is being fuelled by the Reagan administration's often open contempt for the opinion of its all too often—far too often in some cases—loyal allies. That must be a matter of concern for all of us who have had the good fortune to grow up in a Europe mercifully spared the civil wars of almost every other previous generation. Before it is too late, we in western Europe must find new ingredients for the glue that keeps the Alliance together, to ensure that for the next 40 years it will be as successful in holding together our continent and its peoples as it has been for the last 40 years.

It is clear from the debate that superpower relationships dominate not only their own traditional spheres of influence. The waves of tension spread far beyond the areas of the Warsaw pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It is outwith these areas that some of the worst dangers to peace exist for all of us. There is no doubt that the raid by the United States on Libya in April did much to fuel anti-Americanism within the NATO countries. The effect of what was seen by the allies of the United States as a provocative, disproportionate and questionable legal military adventure will be considerable.

My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) articulated a view and asked again, with his usual skill, the uncomfortable questions for which he is now famous or notorious. I hope that the Government and Government hon. Members listened to him with great care, and that the Government will he able to provide the answers to his questions.

I was in East Berlin the day after that raid and with Mr. Gorbachev I was attending as an observer at the East German Communist party congress. Despite what the Americans did to Libya, few of the normally predictable reactions manifested themselves at that time. Of course, we had the expected rhetoric, but it was not overplayed.

East Berlin is known as a barometer of world tension. It is often said that if the temperature of the world goes up, Berlin reaches boiling point. The interest that day in East Berlin was less in world war 3 than in the 58-car cavalcade that Mr. Gorbachev used to visit the tourist sites of the city. Whatever the private anger at the Americans, and it must have been profound, the Soviet Union did not over-react, and instead of retaliation for an attack on a Soviet ally, Mr. Gorbachev used his East Berlin speech, delivered only two days after the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, to make yet another proposal for arms control, this time on conventional troop reductions.

Some hon. Members make the point that instead of superpower relations being permanently confined to nuclear weapons, even though they are of supreme importance to us all, more progress in establishing the trust and understanding that is required for any long-term agreement between the superpowers might be accomplished by looking at other areas of common interest.

The middle east, with its instability and unpredictability and its potential for spilling over on to the world stage, is a headache for both the Soviet Union and the United States. It is the very instability and unpredictability of President Gaddafi that denied him greater Soviet support after the attack on Tripoli. That still prevents the Soviet Union from signing a defence agreement with the Libyans—an agreement for which there is considerable pressure. We should bear in mind that Mr. Gorbachev has scarely more affection for the schizophrenic colonel than has Washington.

Both the superpowers have influence and interest in the middle east, and their common interest is to see greater stability in the area. Soviet influence in Syria is not decisive, but its military links give the Soviet Union some edge in influencing opinion. The United States does not pull the strings in Israel's Administration, but without the United States Israel would be very lonely in that part of the world. Both of the superpowers have worries and concerns, and both need to control and minimise them. Both know that no settlement in the middle east is possible without them both being involved, and both know that international security is not possible without a settlement in the middle east. It is, therefore, a tailor-made situation for genuine superpower co-operation, not just for the hell of it or as an experiment, but in their own naked self-interest.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East mentioned the Gulf war, with all the mind boggling casualty figures that have been cited and the constant escalation. That is another area in which talks are necessary and could produce results. Why not a superpower dialogue on other hot spots in the world, so many of which have already been discussed by hon. Members — I think, for example, of South Africa, Central America, Angola, Kampuchea, or Afghanistan—or even on something that the Foreign Secretary mentioned, terrorism? That is a problem for both East and West, and there is a common interest. Or why not a dialogue on keeping the sea lanes open?

I have referred to areas of considerable danger and damage, which pose a much more potent threat to world peace than any possible invasions across the German plains. They could provide a much more fruitful prospect for building confidence between the two great powers. As the Foreign Affairs Committee said in the very important and thoughtful report published a couple of months ago entitled, "UK-Soviet Relations", Perhaps the most constructive response which can be made by the individual countries of the west (and by the United Kingdom in particular) is to take seriously, and at face value, the Soviet leadership's new readiness to discuss issues of common concern and to seek Western cooperation in the resolution of these issues. Those hon. Members who have just returned from Moscow, and those who, like me, were there earlier this year, would say that that was a very perceptive viewpoint, which could well be adopted by this Government, especially when the Soviet Foreign Minister comes to London in the near future.

Several other questions were raised by hon. Members, and I shall comment on some of them. I know that the House may have a considerable period of reflection on the issues relating to the EC, but the Foreign Secretary chose to raise the issue of Britain's imminent presidency. Just a small elite regularly attend EC debates. I often feel that we should be either certified or given a medal. But we have tried desperately hard during the past few years to get the Government to recognise the importance to both Britain and Europe of the unemployment afflicting this, and many other countries in the Community.

We have regularly failed to obtain any commitment, or even interest, from the Government, but I am glad to say that with only a couple of weeks to go before Britain takes over the presidency of the Community our arguments appear to have borne fruit. Last week, in The Hague, the Foreign Secretary said: Unemployment is a scourge in all our countries. It is our greatest and most urgent challenge and one that can only be met with common policies and common determination. At this late stage, it is nice to welcome the conversion of the Foreign Secretary and the Government to that view, and to the belief that that is the priority that should be at the forefront of the EC's deliberations, whoever happens to be in the chair.

It is profoundly depressing that we can expect the prescription for Europe to be the same miserable prescription that has been applied to the British economy. More of the same will become a Euro-Thatcherism that is laid on the table for the European Council. If that is what the new frontierless internal market is all about, it is an undistinguished contribution to solving Europe's undoubted and massive problems.

We must hope that in future there is more that the Government can do to rise to the challenge of a budget crisis in Europe and an uncontrollable agriculture policy with all the potential that exists in the 12 nations that make up the Community.

A number of hon. Members, including the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence), in a speech that was otherwise entirely undistinguished, referred to an area of alternative diplomacy which is extremely important, especially in the context of the present preoccupation with South Africa. He congratulated the BBC external services in glowing terms, with which I concur. In the BBC external services we have a valued advert for Britain and the way in which we conduct debates. The external services need to be expanded and not contracted. Nowhere and at no time is this better illustrated than here at the present, where there is so much concern on both sides of the House about South Africa.

I note that the hon. and learned Member for Burton has returned to the Chamber. Perhaps that is because he is so unused to hearing any praise from me of any contribution that he has made to a debate in the Chamber. This is an ideal opportunity for the voice of Britain and for British public opinion to be turned on the Republic of South Africa. The broadcasting stations, for geographical and topographical reasons, beam an inadequate signal into South Africa, and now that that country has been sealed off from all opinions other than those officially stated by its Government, this is the ideal opportunity for us to beam our voice into it. I pay tribute to the BBC external services as the instrument and arm of Britain's diplomacy.

Similarly, I pay tribute to the British Council. I declare an interest, as I am vice-chairman of the council. I believe, however, that the work that is done by the council on behalf of Britain is something that we cannot repay in words alone. That work should be expanded and the council should be given resources to enable it to promote Britain as a whole.

This debate and world events in general have been dominated by East-West relations, and that is not surprising. In this context, however, the world is changing as both East and West adjust to the changing circumstances in which they find themselves. There is a genuine debate in the West, and we are right to cherish our right to be self-critical and to have a free voice in declaring opinions. But society is changing in the East and its populations will not for ever be content to be sold an incredible threat of possible western attack, or even to be dragooned by the rattle of Adolf Hitler's bones. There is a new climate in the East. There are demands for consumer goods. There is a desire on the part of the people to have their voice heard if growth is to be achieved. There is a need for prices and production to reflect demand.

Hungary and China tell us that, when people taste the flavour of being listened to, that taste is not easily removed from their palate. There is nothing soft, neutralist or appeasing in recognising the process of change that is taking place in eastern Europe. We can encourage it through dialogue and co-operation, and in the process loosen the chains of ideology and repression that we rightly condemn; or we can challenge the East militarily, with an increasingly suicidal armoury. In the process we would probably drive it hack into the past.

Members of the IPU delegation who visited the Soviet Union and who have spoken in the debate seem to have come home with one clear message — that the new leadership means business. And it was the Prime Minister who told us that we can do business with it. Why do we not rise to the challenge and call its bluff? From our position of strength and freedom in our voluntary alliance, we could make the great step forward to secure freedom for the next generation as well as its survival.