д
2-F 45/57/01
SL/CW 24126/35
21st November, 1968.
2/€
Hong Kong Tunnel
In your letter of 19th November you asked whether there is anything that we can usefully add to what has already been said that you might use in replying to Fogarty's letter of 6th November. Frankly, I do not think there is. The letter of the 6th November does no more than refer to four propositions which are wellknown to us and on the basis of which we have taken it that the Tunnel Company are not prepared to consider the offer made to them.
2.
Our position was fully set out in our Press Notice and in our subsequent comments in the Hong Kong telegram about this Press Notice. As I have understood it in reports from Hong Kong the matter is quiescent there for the time being and I have resisted any steps from this end that would lead to an awakening of new interest in the scheme. I think it is well understood by all those concerned that whenever the Hong Kong Government decides that it is prepared to support this project negotiations might usefully be re-started. Until this point is reached it seems doubtful whether there is any basis upon which fruitful negotiations can be set in train. Costains have never withdrawn their enquiry to us but since they are well aware of the correspondence that passed between Lord Brown and Colonel Clague they will no doubt regard it as otiose to ask us to withdraw an application which as far as they are concerned is moribund.
3.
I am copying this letter to Carter in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
D. L. Hawkins, Esq.,
H. K. Treasury,
Great George Street,
London,
S# W+ 1.
(K. W. Cotterill)
LAST
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RSSFIVED IN ARGMINES Mo.31
22 NOV 1958
HKK 21/4