The NATO Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) met in Ministerial session at the invitation of the Norwegian Government in Stavanger, Norway on l4th and 15th May, 1987. We discussed a wide variety of security matters, including the status of NATO's nuclear forces, current arms control negotiations, the status of implementation of the December 1979 Dual-Track and 1983 Montebello Decisions, the work of several study groups and future NPG work programmes. Deterrence of any aggression continues to be the central security objective of the Alliance. To that end, in this the year of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the strategy of flexible response, we noted that this strategy has stood the test of time and remains an essential and sound basis for the future security of all Alliance members. While improving NATO's conventional forces, we will maintain and improve the nuclear forces necessary to carry out that strategy. In that context, we noted with concern the existing imbalances between Alliance and Warsaw Pact nuclear, conventional and chemical forces as well as the unabated expansion of Warsaw Pact military capabilities across the board. Efforts to secure equitable and effectively verifiable reductions in military forces, both conventional and nuclear, are an integral element of our security policy in seeking to achieve a more stable and secure environment at lower levels of armaments. It is in our security interests that agreements ensure detailed, specific arrangements providing for effective verification; we reject generalized undertakings on verification as an acceptable basis for sound agreements. During our continuing consultations on INF arms control, we welcomed the improved prospects for a longer-range INF agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union encompassing significant reductions in nuclear forces. We reaffirmed that appropriate global constraints on shorter-range missile systems are indispensable. We stressed the requirement to eliminate all United States and Soviet LRINF missiles and called upon the Soviet Union to drop its demand to retain a portion of its SS-20 force. A global zero outcome, a long-standing NATO objective, would further reduce the Soviet threat, and greatly facilitate verification. We accepted with pleasure the invitation of the United States Government to hold our next Nuclear Planning Group Ministerial meeting in the United States in the Autumn of 1987. Greece expressed its views in a statement included in the minutes.