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I think you are aware of the difficult and protracted exercise that has been proceeding over the past twelve fifteen months to produce a study for Ministers on long term policy towards Hong Kong.
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It started off in the Defence Review Working Party where we encountered some difficulty in getting inter-departmental agreement on both the form and content of the study. In April the Commonwealth Secretary directed that the study should take full account of the views of the Governor of Hong Kong who then had an opportunity to look at and comment on the current draft. It was thereafter substantially revised by Mr. Mason and myself in consultation with Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office to take account of the Governor's views and when Mr. Mason visited Hong Kong in June he held further discussions on the revised draft with the Governor, Colonial Secretary and Political Adviser as a result of which further amendments were made and a fresh version of the study was produced. This is at Flag D on the papers below, and I hope you can find time to look at it.
3. A copy of this latest version was sent to Far Eastern Department and was shown to Sir Donald Hopson on his return from Peking. F.E.D's final comments, which will embody views expressed by Sir D. Hopson, are awaited (see Flag 0).
4.
Our present plan is to put the study in its final form to the Hong Kong Ministerial Committee initially, as a paper under the signature of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. But it is my view that we will need to get Mr. Michael Rose's agreement to this course since the study is strictly speaking still within the ambit of the D.R.W.P. and it is arguable that it should appear as an agreed report by officials. The difficulty has been that whereas parts of the study (i.e. Sections A D) can and should be agreed between departments, other departments have been somewhat reluctant to recognise that Sections E onwards are very much a matter for assessment and judgment by the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices, Everybody seems to have their own ideas as to the nature of the animal we are dealing with in Peking and as to how and when we could extricate ourselves from Hong Kong; and I, for one, see no prospect of producing a Section G or H that can take account of all these views without producing a document of evSIL greater length.
5.
We might discuss this point before any approach is made to Mr. Rose.
11 October, 1968
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