Intermediate Nuclear Weapons

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 4:54 pm on 9 March 1987.

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Photo of Mr Denis Healey Mr Denis Healey , Leeds East 4:54, 9 March 1987

With great respect, I have the text here and I shall read it out to the House in a moment. Mr. Gorbachev repeated what the Warsaw pact as a whole said at its meeting last June— that those weapons were put forward only because of the Western deployment of cruise and Pershing and that they would be withdrawn the moment an INF agreement was reached. Beyond that, he agreed to freeze the 9:1 disparity on the rest.

It is not surprising that the position of the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence this afternoon may be somewhat disappointing to those whose imagination was inflamed by the Prime Minister's remarks during Question Time. However, the plain fact is that we all know perfectly well—and this has been said many times by the Foreign Secretary—that disarmament will be achieved only step by step. If we do not reach the first step, the others will not follow.

As the Prime Minister agreed with President Reagan at Camp David, the first step must be agreement on the INF. Then we can discuss the shorter-range intermediate nuclear forces, where the imbalance is nothing like 9:1. We can achieve that only by leaving many of the NATO nuclear weapons out of account. Taking the shorter range forces as a whole, from the lowest to the highest, once cruise and Pershing have gone the United States will have 4,650 warheads in Europe with another 1,900 promised in case of tension. That includes the F111 bombers in Britain, which can drop bombs on Moscow, and, of course, the 400 Poseidon.