R. 318.
PA a relations
will Chunk file
Kr. Joaden
Q.
27.
Mr
CONFIDENTIAL
Lands not
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I attach for the Minister's consideration a copy of an agreed Submission which the Foreign Office is putting up to its Ministers on the subject of exchanging special visits to communist journalists imprisoned in Hong Kong in return for access to Mr. Grey. I support the recommendations therein. note that at this stage the proposals are being put to the Governor and to Sir Donald Hopson for comments:
Flag 306)2.
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In his telegram No. 212 the Governor has, with some reluctance, agreed to extend an offer of special visits to other communist journalists as well as to the two NCNA journalists, and to include NCNA representatives in visits to those other journalists.
fold :-
(i)
His main fears in this exercise have been three-
NCNA visits to non-NCNA journalists will encourage NCNA to claim a quasi-consular role.
(Ii) There is some imprecision which might be dangerous
about the category of "other patriotic journalists" to which the Chinese are seeking access.
(iii) The arrangements will be seen to discriminate between
different categories of prisoners.
even special
3. There is nothing which we can do about (iii): visits to NCNA journalists in this context constitute discrimination. It will help, however, if we keep as low as possible the number of persons to whom we allow accesso But on (i) we think that Sir Donald Hopson's point in paragraph 3(c)
As those to be visited are all journalists and NCNA is a press organisation we will not be allowing the arrangement to drift outside the strictly journalist context.
Flag G. 310 of his telegram No. 133 is sufficient answer.
4. On (ii) our proposals provide (paragraph 3 of the second draft telegram) that the Governor will be in a position to refuse visits to any prisoners who, in his opinion, do not fall within the category of journalists.
5.
There are two points on which our proposals are not altogether in line with the Governor's :-
RCIVED IN
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(a) The detailed arrangements are being left for discussion
in Hong Kong.
(b) We suggest that we should go firm from the outset on
access by NCNA to other journalists and not hold this back as the Governor would prefer (paragraph 7 of his telegram No. 212).
NUB 3/2
/ 6.
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