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alians were rather ambivalent and only the Germans had come out irmly against the exclusion of Hong Kong. This account was confirmed to me by the Commercial Counsellor in the German Permanent Representatior who said that the Germans were distinctly worried at the lack of support for thier position by other member states.
4. Tran added that he did not think that the French would necessarily press for outright exclusion of Hong Kong very fiercely since they had certain anxieties themselves about our attitude towards giving prefer- lences to French overseas territories in the event of Hong Kong being
excluded at their instigation. They seemed in any case to think that by getting the Community to adopt a restrictive general safeguard mechanism they would in fact compel the other under-developed countries to insist on the exclusion of Hong Kong and thus get the Community off the hook on this point.
5. Tran went on to say that the Commission, and in particular di Martino, were well aware of the political problems which the exclusion of Hong Kong would pose for us. He hoped that it would be possible to work for some softening of the outright exclusion line. He said that . the sort of position the Commission might move to was to withdraw the the proposal for the outright exclusion of Hong Kong to exclude all products on which Hong Kong was the Community's main under-developed
supplier; and to include for Hong Kong's benefit, only a few products in which she might have some interest. He added that it would be very helpful to him if we were able to indicate what sort of products, of secondary interest from the Hong Kong exporting point of view, and therefore not a danger to the Community, would provide a minimum token contribution on the Community's part which would be acceptable to us.
6. On this last point I said that I would of course report his sugg- estion. But my first reaction was that it was most unlikely that we would wish to give any indication of this sort.
7.
Tran concluded by saying that the French were continuing to press for an extremely restrictive general safeguard mechanism.
Their prop- o sal was that a general safeguard procedure should be triggered off as soon as imports under the preferential scheme reached 3% of Community consumption of any individual product. They seemed rather unclear on how one could accurately measure Community consumption of a particular product and they were only just beginning to realise the dangerous inst- itutional implications of their proposal. Expanding this latter point, Tran said that, of course, the only organisation that could establish whether or not the figure had been passed was the Commission, which me- ant that the French would have to give considerable powers to that body. Another point was that normal Community procedures would not help the French much in this respect since they could not rely on getting decis- | i ons by unanimity or by qualified majority to impose quantitative rest-
rictions on preferential imports. They were therefore proposing that request by any member state should be sufficient to institute such action; but this was being strongly resisted by all the other member states.
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18.