NUCLEAR STOCKPILE IN SINGAPORE

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30629, 21 December 1964, Page 11

NUCLEAR STOCKPILE IN SINGAPORE

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright)

LONDON, Dec. 20.

Britain has an underground stockpile of nuclear weapons in Singapore “rigidly committed to the South - East Asia Treaty Organisation,” the “Daily Express” defence correspondent, Chapman Pincher, said today.

Nuclear weapons were also stored in Cyprus and others were earmarked for use in Royal Navy carriers east of Suez, Pincher wrote. “Although the nuclear weapons are not likely to be used, our allies feel much safer for knowing they are there,” he added.

Pincher said the British Prime Minister (Mr Harold Wilson) “cannot pacify Mr Frank Cousins. Mr Anthony Greenwood, Mrs Barbara Castle and his other nuclear disarmers by getting rid of the independent deterrent in one straight deal as they believed he would. “He cannot solve his problem by recalling the bombs to Britain.

“He finds that those in Cyprus are firmly committed to the defence of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan through C.E.N.T.O. the Central Treaty Organisation set up by Britain.

“They cannot be withdrawn

except by mutual agreement.

“And the Persians and the Pakistanis have repeatedly stressed that they would feel abandoned by the West without the Cyprus bombs, and the 32 Royal Air Force bombers ready to deliver them in a ‘right hook’ through southern Russia. “The bombs and aircraft in Singapore are just as rigidly committed to S.E.A.T.O. . . . which is currently active in the defence of Malaysia against Indonesian attack.” Pincher said the existence of nuclear weapons in Cyprus and Singapore was "never officially confirmed in public because that would create difficulties for the local rulers.”