(GNT 7/5)
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Nationality and Treaty Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office Clive House London SWA
Petty France
London, S.W.1.
9 July 1969
Would you
29 November to letter (LE 231 length of time
Registration of Bilateral Agreements concluded by United Kingdom Overseas
Territories
please refer to your letter (14/9/96) of David Anderson enclosing a copy of Mr. Kiernik's FP) of 22 November. I must apologise for the it has taken to give a reply to this enquiry.
2. On legal advice here I can confirm that, as a matter of principle, we should not wish the Secretariat to depart from their practice of recording in their treaty register that the party to a registrable agreement concluded by a United Kingdom
It is the overseas territory is the United Kingdom itself. United Kingdom as a Stute which is the international person and which alone has the capacity to conclude treaties (and, in consequence would bear the responsibility in respect of any. failure to carry out a treaty).
3. The ultimate responsibility for these "colonial agreements remains with the United Kingdom, whether the overseas territory is exercising a general entrustment of treaty-making powers (cf. the provisions of the Defence and External Affairs Agreements with the Associated States) or acting with the authority and consent of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom on an Lâ hoc basis. In the latter case, the authority and consent should be expressed in the agreement itself, though this is not always insisted on (for example, when a territory is about to accede to independence).
4. If an agreement omits the "with the authority and consent" formula, then before we can agree to its being registered we have to satisfy ourselves that the territory acted with due authority. Since this authority should have been conferred on the territory concerned by means of a general or ad hoc entrustment before the agreement was concluded, we are naturally reluctant to endorse an agreement ex post facto, though this is sometimes unavoidable.
H. G. Darwin, Esq.,
United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations,
New York.
1.
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