asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will take action to secure the establishment of a new multilateral negotiating forum for disarmament in which all nuclear states and other military powers would participate.

At its Special Session on Disarmament in 1978 the United Nations General Assembly agreed to set up a new deliberative body on disarmament—The United Nations Disarmament Commission. It also agreed to restructure the existing Committee on Disarmament as a negotiating forum.

The deliberative body—that is the UN Disarmament Commission—includes all member states of the United Nations. It meets annually in New York for four to six weeks to discuss policy guidelines on disarmament.

The negotiating body—that is the Committee on Disarmament—has a more limited membership of 40 states. These include the five permanent members of the Security Council who are also the five nuclear weapons states, and virtually all other militarily significant states.

This committee is not formally speaking an agency of the United Nations but it reports annually to the UN General Assembly and the Assembly in turn refers particular issues to it. In this way all member states of the UN in the course of annual debates in the General Assembly can comment on the work of the committee.

In view of these arrangements, I do not think it necessary to propose the establishment of a further negotiating body as suggested in the Deputy's question.

22.