Arms Cuts Go ‘Far Enough’--Thatcher : Britain Will Continue to Buy Trident Nuclear Missiles, She Says

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said today that nuclear arms reductions in Europe “have gone far enough.”

Thatcher, who last month welcomed a superpowers’ agreement in principle to remove intermediate-range missiles from Europe, made the comments in a keynote address to the annual conference of her Conservative Party.

She also told the 5,000 delegates that her eight years in power have wrought a “national revival.” She pledged to go ahead with education overhaul and urban renewal plans that will undermine left-wing local authorities, the main bastions of opposition to her thrice-victorious government.

“So long as the Soviet Union continues to enjoy massive superiority in chemical and conventional forces, we say reductions in nuclear weapons in Europe have gone far enough,” said Thatcher, who won a third five-year term in June.

Thatcher said Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of reforms and glasnost are “genuinely courageous, not least in their admission that after 70 years the socialist system has failed to produce the standard of life the Russian people want.

“But we have yet to see that policy carry through into the Soviet Union’s policies towards the outside world,” she added, reiterating that Britain will continue to buy U.S. Trident long-range nuclear missiles.

The Trident system will increase eight times the nuclear firepower that Britain now has with its Polaris fleet of missile submarines.

The nuclear arsenals of Britain and France, Western Europe’s only nuclear powers, were not included in the superpower agreement.

“We have both a right and duty to remind the whole Free World that Britain is once more confident, strong and trusted,” Thatcher declared.

“Confident because attitudes have changed . . . strong, because our economy is enterprising . . . trusted, because we are known to be a powerful ally and a faithful friend.”

The U.S.-Soviet agreement, announced after a meeting in Washington between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, calls for the removal of medium- and shorter-range nuclear weapons from Europe. Details are to be negotiated.