ME Heath Esq
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Gt George Street
SW1.
BOARD OF TRADE,
1 VICTORIA STREET,
LONDON S.W.1
10 July 1970
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55
Der Marke
U.K. RELATIONS WITH HONG KONG ON TEXTILES
We have the following textual changes to suggest to the draft Submission enclosed with your letter of 6 July:
IN
TULIOTO
HK
1+KK 6/18
The
(i) Some revision of para.7 is required by the fact that Hong Kong is not a separate signatory of the L.T.A. L.T.A. was accepted by the United Kingdom on behalf of Hong Kong. This is clearly stated for example in the introduction to the text of the Long Term Arrangement. I think that a misapprehension may have arisen from various communications from our delegation at Geneva e.g. Sir E Melville's letter of 23 December to Mr Goldsmith refers to "Hong Kong's posi- tion as a signatory of the Long Term Arrangement", and the delegation's recent telegram No.451 states that "Hong Kong participates in its own right in the L.T.A.". I am writing to Buxton to point out that these phrases seem mistaken. The following changes are accordingly necessary in paragraph 7 of your draft:
(a) In the 8th line substitute a full-stop for the semi-colon after the word "goods" and replace the remainder of that sentence and the following sentence with the following words:
"The United Kingdom accepted the Long Term Arrangement
on behalf of Hong Kong, and with our approval Hong Kong has negotiated such agreements with all the major importing countries. The countries party to the Long Term Arrangement are members of the Cotton Textiles Committee of the GATT. 11
(b)
In the next sentence but one delete "although Hong Kong participates in her own right in the L.T.A. her" and substitute simply "Hong Kong's".
(c) In the last sentence of the paragraph insert the
word "independently" after the word "views". This would look forward more neatly to the language of paragraph 10.
(ii) In paragraph 8 first sentence insert "some "before"non-
cotton textiles". Delete the second sentence. In the
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