of this year.
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What was envisaged was to extend them on a temporary basis for nine months to carry them to the end of the current period of the CTA, and talks were expected to take place to this end before the end of the year. As regards any further renewal, this would depend on the
position under the CTA but also on the attitude of the Community as a whole (e.g., under the common commercial
policy the Community as such, as distinct from the individual
Member States, might wish to negotiate with Hong Kong, and Hong Kong would need to decide what sort of an arrangement would be suitable in these circumstances). In this connection,
there was the further complication of the French restrictions
under Article 2.
6. I concluded that, for all these reasons, among others, it would be very difficult for Hong Kong at least to conclude
new bilateral arrangements before the future of the CTA was
known; and I felt that the same would be true of a number of
⚫ther exporting countries. The fact was that for purely
administrative reasons, if for no other, I considered that
there would not be time to go through the sort of process
Salib had in mind on this occasion.
7. Salib then asked me how I would envisage the situation
developing. I replied that at the recent meeting of the CTC only two exporting countries (UAR and Korea) had come
out flatly against any renewal of the CTA and that no
importing country had done so. It seemed to me, therefore,
that it should not prove unduly difficult to agree on an extension for, say, two years. I could see Salib's point
about any tinkering with the wording of the CTA opening up a
pandora's box of argument and confusion, but I did think that
it should be possible, for instance, to delete Article 2 and
Annex A. This would be a relatively simple operation and it
/was one
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