UN General Assembly
1983

51. It is time, at this stage of my statement, to come back to strategic nuclear armaments in the world. We cannot reject the idea—and I do not—that the five nuclear Powers should together debate, when the time comes, a permanent limitation of their strategic systems. We must therefore set out clearly the conditions for progress in this field. 52. The first of these conditions is the correction of the fundamental difference, in terms of type and quantity, between the armaments of the two major Powers and those of the others, and the difference between a country that might use them to assert its power and a country which might be forced to make use of them for its own survival. 53. The second condition flows from the wide gap between conventional forces, particularly in Europe, a gap which has become even wider, I fear, because of the existence of chemical and biological weapons, the manufacture and stockpiling of which must be prohibited by a convention.