IL
CONFIDENTIAL
2649
43
To leking
Me Carcir,
BRITISH EMBASSY, co.
WASHINGTON D.C.
4 October 1968
AS
This does not square with para 11 of 6262
(10/10)
Dear Jones,
(260
Until we received Hong Kong telegram No. 2045 of 2 October the last information we had on file about the question of U.S. Naval visits to Hong Kong was Commonwealth Office telegram No. 1412 of 30 August to the Governor provid- ing him with a douceur to offer if the Americans pressed strongly for more visits by nuclear-powered vessels. The State Department had told me, however, that it was the intention of the Consul General on his return to Hong Kong after leave to go back to the Governor about visits by nuclear-powered vessels. It may well be therefore such a meeting has taken place and that the Governor has now made the recommendation to the Commonwealth Office referred to in paragraph 3 of Hong Kong telegram No. 1412.
2. On 1 October the Assistant Naval Attache received a call from Captain Rees of U.S.N. Politics/Military Division, who said that he wished to talk about the programme of visits to Hong Kong in 1969. From the conversation with Captain Jungius it emerged that the top figure of 6 visits per year for nuclear-powered vessels had already been mentioned in Hong Kong. The Americans accepted the need for strict limits on nuclear- powered surface vessels of all types and said that they thought 4 would be quite sufficient for their purposes. However the strict limit on visits of nuclear submarines they found extremely difficult to work with and in drawing up their pro- gramme for visits in 1969 they thought they might run into trouble on this score. Captain Rees said that their present programme for 1969 ideally called for permission for 3 nuclear-powered surface ships and 6 nuclear-powered submarines or 4 surface ships and 5 submarines to visit Hong Kong. The Assistant Naval Attache pointed out that even if the U.K. were to concede a higher figure than 6, (and he could give no guarantee on this) we would of course still wish to have some formula which gave us detailed control over the total number of visits and this the U.S. Navy accepted.
3.
When Captain Jungius came to see me about this conversa- tion I told him that I thought it was most unlikely that the Commonwealth Office and the Governor would concede a higher figure for visits now. To reopen the matter at once would be certain to cause irritation. I thought that the U.8. Navy would be very unwise to do so and I doubted if the State Department would support them. My own view was that the U.S. Navy would be well advised to pipe down and accept the annual
James Murray, Esq.,C.M.G.,
Far Eastern Department,
Foreign Office,
London S.W.1.
CONFIDENTIAL
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