'Dual key’ for U.K. cruises

Press, 8 July 1983, Page 6

'Dual key’ for U.K. cruises

NZPA-Reuter London Britain yesterday renewed its commitment to deploy American cruise nuclear missiles but emphasised that they would not be launched without the agreement of the Prime Minister. The Government also made it clear in a defence policy paper that it still intended to update its own independent nuclear deterrent by replacing the ageing Polaris missiles with a £7.5 billion ($17.5 billion) Trident missile system. The paper issued by the Defence Secretary, Mr Michael Heseltine, said that arrangements governing the use by the United States of military bases and nuclear weapons in Britain had been reviewed because of the approaching deployment of 160 cruise missiles as part of N.A.T.O.’s defence against the Soviet Union.

The effect of the arrangements would be, “that no nuclear weapons would be fired or launched from British territory without the agreement of the British Prime Minister.” Officials said that it was the first time the arrangement had been published in such explicit form. It came after demands for a “dual key” system by politicians who feared that the United States could go it alone and launch a nuclear strike from British soil.

The paper was published with a defence budget estimate of £15.9 billion ($37 billion) for 1983-84, 13 per cent up on the 1982-83 estimates and more than any of Britain’s European

allies. It includes an extra £624 million ($1.45 billion) to maintain a garrison on the Falkland Islands, recaptured in a war with Argentina last year.

It said that Britain was strongly committed to N.A.T.O. and a collective deterrent to check a continuing Soviet military build-up and nudge the Kremlin to negotiate seriously on curbing nuclear weapons. “We cannot afford policies based on emotion rather than logic, not theatrical gestures which would achieve nothing save to weaken our own security,” it said.

The Opposition Labour Party had pledged to scrap nuclear arms and shut American bases if it had won last month’s General Election.

But the defence paper said that N.A.T.O. would be put at risk if Britain denied bases to American forces: “The result would be to undermine stability in Europe, increase the danger of war and thus jeopardise our own security.” The first cruise missiles will be deployed later this year at the Greenham Common air base, 80km west of London, and anti-nuclear campaigners are gearing up for a big protest.

A battalion of British soldiers had been moved on to the base to bolster defences, the paper disclosed. Military sources said that the Government feared terrorists or saboteurs might try to infiltrate the base in the guise of peace protesters.