Persal: for background infernten,
of the need for speed
Keference...
68
Hong Kong
Canada
In view of what was said at the meeting yesterday, it might be advisable to record what has happened in the case of polyester/cotton, polyester/polynosic shirts :-
a) On 13th June Sir Arthur Snelling told Mr. Jordan
precisely and clearly what the constitutional position was: that, while Hong Kong had delegated authority to enter into negotiations and conclude agreements with third countries under Article 4 of the L.T.A., they had no such authority in the case of man-made fibre products. Mr. Jordan said in reply that Hong Kong had always accepted that they must keep their policies in line with those of the United Kingdom.
b)
c)
W the i
2.
a)
2300
At the meeting on 24 June, after the Swedish negotiations, Mr. Jordan said in reply to a question that although he would be going to Canada and would see Mr. Rodney Grey there would be no negotiations at present: and it will be recalled that he bridled considerably when I said that we hoped that this meant that he would not be discussing "hypothetical" figures, as had happened unknown to us in the Swedish case.
We heard nothing further until I got the High Commission record of the proceedings in Ottawa in the second half of July. This showed that Mr. Jordan had in fact entered into a detailed negotiation with the Canadians.
This was followed by a copy letter, dated 23rd July, from the Canadian Department of Finance apologising for the delay in forwarcing the statistics attached i A letter. This reached us on the 28th July. I raised the matter immediately with C.R.3.1 and the F.C.0. and a bland interrogatory tdegran was sent to Hong Kong on 31st July reminding them that we wished to be consulted before Hong Kong entered into any commitment to negotiate with the Canadians. The immediate reply from Hong Kong was one of injured innocence, announcing, in effect, that every- thing had been fixed up to do a deal with the Canadians on August 12th. The Canadians themselves were nost reluctant to have a mecting in August: they would have preferred September.
We then received from llong Kong on or about 7th August a copy of Jordan's record of his conversations with the Canadians on 27th June. This record was dated 26th July and had attached to it a few additional but very incomplete figures, for example, there is no information about Canadian production of knitted shirts, although the Canadians promised on 27th June to provide what informa- tion they could. (It will be recalled that we told Mr. Jordan in June that we considered we had not been given enough information, e.g. dx on the issue of export authorisations, etc., by Hong Kong to enable us to reach an informed decision on injury. The Hong Kong authoritics clearly have information on, e.g. 1968 exports of polyester/cotton shirts which is not available elsewhere).
There is no parallel between this and the Swedish case, unless it is that on the carlier occasion Hong Kong also played her cards deliberately to embarrass us, c.g. by entering into discussions on