ARMS DEALS WITH CHINA

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33778, 26 February 1975, Page 17

ARMS DEALS WITH CHINA

Denial by U.K. Foreign Office (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, February 25. A spokesman for the British Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) has described as nonsense a London press report indicating that he might have agreed to ban British arms exports to China as part of the trade deal with the Soviet Union he signed in Moscow recently. A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: “There was no discussion in Moscow about putting China on any trading black list.” The “Daily Express” had reported that Mr Wilson was to be asked in Parliament if he had agreed to impose a ban on British arms exports to China as part of the BritishRussian trade deal. The newspaper’s defence correspondent. Chapman Pincher, reoorted that the Society of British Aerospace Companies had complained that China had now been placed on the list of countries to which the sale of British military equipment had been banned. “A huge Rolls-Royce deal to set up a factory in China to make Spey engines for the Chinese Air Force is now in grave doubt,” Mr Pincher had written. British Government officials say that the negotiations for Spey engines are continuing.