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Part I to COS 20th Meeting/68 20th March 1968
It was
negotiations for the period after that date. arguable whether some of the costs which the Ministry of Defence did not feel should fall to them should not be met by some other United Kingdom Government Department such as the Commonwealth Office, rather than the Hong Kong Government.
In discussion, the following points were made:
a. It was agreed that it would, from a Ministry of Defence point of view, be wrong to accept as a charge on the Defence Vote the cost of units which were required for political but not for military purposes.
b. Paragraph 4 e. indicated that the economic importance of Hong Kong to China would decline in the foreseeable future. AIR MARSHAL MAGUIRE (Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Intelligence)) stated that this might not prove to be the case and recommended certain amendments to make the paragraph less decisive. The amendments were agreed (Annex)..)
C. In paragraph 25 the timings for the second and subsequent battalions as quoted might prove optimistic since the normal notice for battalions, other than the spearhead battalion, was seven days and it was sometimes not possible to reduce notice to 24 hours immediately. An amendment was agreed (Annex).
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Paragraphs 35 and 36 were tied to the figure of reinforcement of up to 103 major units. Clearly there was a need, for planning purposes, to agree on some figure for Pre-stocked Unit Equipment and War Maintenance Reserve holdings in the Colony, but it would be preferable at this stage to make reference only to a need for a limited amount of pre-stocking for reinforcing battalions from the United Kingdom. The question of whether to withdraw the present stockpile of tanks in the Colony should be deferred for the present. Swing-fire for the armoured cars would not be introduced until 1971; there was also the problem of withdrawing the tanks which would be difficult to conceal and so could cause a certain lack of confidence. It was agreed that the
Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Policy), in conjunction with the Army Department,
would re-draft paragraphs 35 and 36 to
avoid too precise a definition of the number of reinforcing units required. Consequential amendments would also be required to paragraphs 41 d. and e.
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