I have been asked to reply to your letter of 13 July to the Foreign Secretary about the work programme on the Conference of Disarmament and the UN Secretary General's call for a Special Conference on Nuclear Dangers. You mentioned rumours that we were not enthusiastic about either development.

  The rumours are only half right. It is not correct to say that we are unenthusiastic about the establishment of a subsidiary body at the CD to deal with nuclear disarmament. During the recently ended CD session, the Belgian President circulated a draft work programme for the conference which included the establishment of such a body. I attach a copy of the Belgian proposal for your information. We have told the Belgians and others that we support the proposed formula.

  It is, however, true to say that we are not enthusiastic about the UN Secretary General's proposal for a Special Conference. During his recent visit to the UK, the UN USG for Disarmament Affairs, Mr Dhanapala told us that the UN envisaged the conference taking place in two or three years time after a Preparatory Committee had met to draft a political declaration. We fully support the Secretary General's desire to see faster progress towards nuclear disarmament. But this proposal seems to us to duplicate the work of the NPT Review Process and to be based on the assumption that the CD will never agree a work programme. We wish to focus our efforts on turning what was agreed in New York in May into action. Holding another conference would cause confusion and divert attention from building on the consensus reached in New York.