CONFIDENTIAL
21.
I realise that these recommendations contain
unpalatable elements but the alternative is the
prolongation of our present very bad relations for a
number of years. The Chinese may possibly let the
matter drop before 1974 but that, the date when all
confrontation prisoners will be released if they
serve their full terms, is strictly our terminal date.
Even this assuns that there is no new deterioration in
the situation, as will always be more likely while
confrontation persists. To resign ourselves therefore
to a policy of waiting for things to get better,
when they may well get worse, suums very much a policy
of despair. I must, of course, on behalf of my staff
and myself declare a highly personal interest in the
solution of this problem. I hope this fact has not
overcoloured some of the arguments in this memorandum,
in which I have tried to present the problem, in terms
of our wider interests, as objectively as possible.
O
29 July, 1968
D. C. HOPSON
Office of The British
Chargé d'Affaires,
PEKING
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