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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and I applaud what he just said. Does he agree that it would make an enormous contribution towards the likelihood of the non-proliferation treaty being continued, and would put far greater pressure on Iran, if the United States and Russia, which both still have approximately 5,000 strategic nuclear warheads—infinitely more than they need for their mutual defence—could be persuaded to initiate negotiations? President Obama has implied that he would be willing to support such negotiations for a massive further reduction in the number of nuclear warheads of the two powers, which, together, have 95 per cent. of the world's nuclear weapons.