CONFIDENTIAL
To: Director of Commerce and Industry, Hong Kong.
From: Counsellor (Hong Kong Affairs), Geneva.
Memorandum No. 104/69
File No. GVA/10/8/1
Date: 20 October 1969.
My memorandum No. 100 of 30 September 1969.
O.E.C.D.
Ad Hoc Working Group on Preferences
The Working Group held another meeting, which lasted
the whole week from 13 17 October, to consider the draft
of its Report to the Trade Committee (TC/Pref./69.22 enclosed).
It will be seen that, apart from a short Introduction, the
draft consists of two parts. Part I was intended by the
Se retariat to be the Report to the Trade Committee while
Part II was a draft of texts for possible submission to
UNCTAD as "substantive documentation". It will be recalled
that, at the meeting of the UNCTAD Special Committee at the
beginning of July, the Group B "prospective donor" countries
had agreed to forward "substantive documentation" on their
proposals for a generalised system of preferences to the
UNCTAD Secretariat by 15 November.
2.
I was not able to attend the first two days of the
meeting, due to the U.S./Hong Kong textile talks in Geneva,
but arrived in Paris for the third day. I had, in point of
fact, not missed very much because most of the time until then
had been taken up in a procedural wrangle.
3. It will be recalled that at the previous meeting the EEC
had indicated an intention to forward the substance of their
own Submission, tabled in the OECD in March, to the UNCTAD for
the 15 November deadline. The U.K. and certain other countries
had also shown signs that they were likely to do the same.
The U.S. and Japan, however, were opposed to this and preferred
that only a consolidated text, common to all the prospective
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/donor