о
}
nolia
Bo Todober 69
вёт
HKK 6/534/1
October
By
Mur
28/4 1/5
ليها
another
Hong Kong Department
I month.
2 months please"
14/24/2/69
Мих 2/1
24/4
23 January, 1969
I am afraid that I have failed to carry out the promise
I made to you in my letter HKK 6/534/1 dated 24th October, 1968, to raise with your Government the question of extending the Anglo-Benelux Agreed Minute on Trade to cover the Dependent Territories before the annual renewal of the Agreed Minute. Now I fear it is too late to do so, the occasion having in a sense passed by. This year there was no such meeting with Belgian and Netherlands delegations as was held a year ago, when the Board of Trade proposal to include reference to the Overseas territories of the United Kingdom was first considered. There was therefore no full dress opportunity, as it were, è which to pursue the matter.
2. However, it is not the case that the Board of Trade have abandoned their proposal; indeed, as late as November last the discussions with Serraris in the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs which began after the 1967 meeting were contiming with the same end in mind. Judging from the papers I would have to admit that Serraris had been from the start something of an optimist over this matter. Nevertheless, his last recorded observation was that he saw no reason for not accepting the Board of Trade request and hoped he could bring his Benelux colleagues round to agree.
3. I have occasionally found myself falling into some misapprehension about this business. In the first place, I did not fully appreciate that it was entirely the Board of Trade which suggested this amendment to the Mimute for the sake of no more that I can see than tidiness. I have also, from time to time, made the mistake of tending to think of the proposal as the inclusion of Hong Kong in the Agreed Minute, rather than of Hong Kong as one, and no more than one, of the Dependent Territories. Another wrong assumption on my part has been that there would necessarily have to be a full-blown meeting of the three delegations to continue the discussion where it left off in December 1967, and that that full-blown meeting would have to be round about January this year when, if no amendments were made to the Mimute, it would run in its previous form for another year without opportunity to include the Dependent Territories.
D. M. Sellers, Esq..
Hong Kong Government Office,
54 Pall Mall,
LONDON, S.W.1.