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CONFIDENTIAL
UNITED KINGDOM MISSION 37-39 rue de Vermont, 1202 Geneva Telex: 22956
Telegrams: Prodrome, Geneva
Telephone: 34.38.00, 33.23.85
38
10 April, 1969.
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to Mr. Stewart (HKD)
Euler 1 re-cire to Miss Stoddart
JMU
1114
When I wrote to you on 1 April I had not seen COM.WD/W/93. No doubt this letter will cross with the briefing you are providing and it may be too late to get thel. exactly on the basis set out in that document; but We can easily put that right. At a first glance the new Paper seems a fair attempt to set the same matorial out differently, with no defects as far as we are concerned. There is no sign yet of the further document promised in para 3 giving import data.
In this context it was useful to have the information about the Working Party on dollar area restrictions in your letter of 3 April. We shall bear this in mind.
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There is another point, which arises both in the
context of the residual restrictions group and possibly in other Committees, which you may like to consider with otllers in CRE 1. You may have seen the Hong Kong memorandum 10/59, written by Derek Jones here and copied to Dunnett and Kemmis, About French restrictions. I alluded to this at the end of my letter to you' of 15 February on the last CTD meeting and sgail. in my letter of 1 April. I have since seen a draft recorû of the trade talks that took place between France and Hong Kong-in-mid-March and there are a number of interesting points init, Of course many of them relate to discriminatory restrictions against Hong Kong of one kind or another and although we should be concerned with that I am sure these will be amply covered by their people in the despatch which gather is being sent to the FCO, reporting on the talks. At the same time there are some wider aspects of GT interest which may mean that it is worthwhile looking out for that despatch when it comes round.
1. For example, according to the record I saw, the Franch maintain different treatment for OECD countries and for other GATT members. In terms of quotas this means that some items are liberalised to OECD countries but still restricted to the rest of GATT (either by unilaterally imposed o bilateral arrangements or under global quotas). This is
Secc..dly, clearly not GATT-worthy, even though it favours us. I think it is also true that the French have not publish details of the level of the global quotas in all cases for
J.G. Morris Esq.,
CRE 1. B.O.T.
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