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SAVING DESPATCH
From the Governor, Hong Kong
423
To the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
No.
Repeated to:-
No.
Repeated to:--
No.
Date................. 9th April, 1970
My Reference TC 363/69..
Your Reference. HKK 6/30
Registration of Agreements for the purposes of
Article 102 of the United Nations Charter
Your saving despatch No. 369 of 31st July, 1969.
Apart from the fact pointed out in your saving despatch that such agreements concerning trade in cotton textiles come under the general adherence to the Long Term Arrangement by Her Majesty's Government on Hong Kong's behalf, they have other special features which seem to me to make it unnecessary, and in some respects undesirable, to give them full status under Article 102 of the United Nations Charter.
2.
In the first place, agreement to restrict exports of cotton textiles involves a unilateral derogation from GATT rights. We prefer, when we can, to represent such agreement as a voluntary undertaking on our part and the majority of our agreements take this form, at least by implication. We would not wish to see them accorded any status which implied that they represented agreements (for consideration on both sides, i.e. in which we receive some compensating advantage in return for our undertaking to restrict our exports of cotton textiles.
3.
Secondly, as an extension of this, we would argue that, in terms of the GATT and LTA, the only sanction open to an aggrieved party is through the GATT and the LTA (neither of which is a U.N. agency), not through the U.N.
4.
Thirdly, because of these special features we would wish to avoid such agreements being represented as formally binding on H.M.G. in the United Kingdom, so as to avoid the implication that these special features do not exist and that these agreements are freely negotiated for the mutual benefit of Hong Kong and the importing country concerned. H.M.G.'s ultimate obligations on behalf of Hong Kong, through the GATT and LTA, remain unaffected by registration.
5.
In the light of these considerations, I would prefer that such agreements were not registered with the U.N. (and I understand that signatories other than the U.S. have not so registered them) but, if a country requires registration, I would suggest that the U.S. proposal of "registration as presented" is the least likely to have undesirable repercussions for both U.K. and Hong Kong.
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