'
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negotiation there. Mr. Kenmis agreed, though he thought that it would be extremely difficult to evaluate any package which emerged. Finally, as regard the third stage, it would be for our delegation at UNCTAD to do their best to carry out the under- taking in the communique, though it had to be borne in mind that the Group divisions in UNCTAD were more meaningful to Commonwealth countries and a series of Commonwealth meetings might be difficult to organise.
South Africa
7. Mir. Kemmis said that the Board of Trade had given no thought to consultation with the South African Government, which had a trade agreement with us and contractual preferences which in some cases were the same as Australia's. Moreover, the South Africans had been sore about lack of consultation over the Kennedy round offers. He asked for my opinion. I said that as far as I knew the matter had not be considered in the FCO and we would now do so, and let him have the result. Prima facie it seemed to me to benin our interest given the importance to us of the South African market, for us to consult South Africa in the same way as Commonwealth countries in the same position.
Hong Kong and the EEC.
8. I repeated to Mr. Kemnis the point in paragraph 6 of my minute of 17 January to Miss Stoddart that we should consider making representations in certain EEC capitals about the possible exclusion of long Kong from the Community's offer, with the additional point that it might be politically important for Ministers here to be able to say that they had taken such steps to protect Hong Kong's interests, if Hong Kong were in the event excluded. Mr. Kemmis took the point. He had asked Mr. Morris, a member of his department who had gone to Geneva, to discuss this question there with Mr. Goldsmith together with the points raised in Mr. Hannay's letters from Brussels and to let the Board of Trade know the results. knew that Mr. Goldsmith had been in favour of confining this matter to the appropriate international forum; his response was, however, awaited. There was the point that the U.S.A. might possibly exclude Hong Kong: Mr. Kemmis had had hints from the Americans that there was a difference of opinion on this between the State Department and other U.S. agencies; there was also the point that if stringent safe-guards were proposed by developed countries, these would raise a general question and would affect countries like fakistan as well as Hồng Kong.
He
As regard informing the Hong Kong Government, Mr. Kemmis would be embarrassed if Mr. Hannay's letters were sent to the Hong Kong Government as they
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/stood
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