}
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negotiations would succeed or not it was impossible to say at this stage, but there was a very considerable amount of goodwill among the Six members of the Community. He thought that with that goodwill and determination there was a good chance that we would find solutions.
5. The High Commissioner for Jamaica asked if it was proposed to hold such briefing meetings after each Ministerial meeting. Mr. Barber said that if it were the wish we could do so, but what he had in mind was to have a meeting in Brussels with Commonwealth Representatives there after each Ministerial meeting. It might be that at some of the meetings no points of Commonwealth interest would arise, in which case there would be no point in having a meeting. Again, there would be other meetings where the matters under discussion would be of interest to only some members of the Commonwealth, in which case there might be a meeting with them.
6. The High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago referred to a point which Mr. Barber made in Brussels that if a Commonwealth country had a particular point to raise, he should do so in London. Mr. Barber said he had made this point because he wanted to make clear to the Commonwealth Representatives in Brussels that his purpose in seeing them would be to report what had happened, so that in their discussions with the Communities they would know what had actually transpired. If there are any particular points which Commonwealth Governments wanted the U.K. to bear in mind and to consider, he thought it more convenient that that sort of discussion should take place in London. Sir C. O'Neill added that one of the
problems was that not all Commonwealth Governments were represented in Brussels. It would be natural if some Commonwealth Governments not represented in Brussels wished to have this kind of meeting after the more important meetings.
7. The High Commissioner for Australia asked if Mr. Barber had detected an atmosphere of goodwill in consideration of Commonwealth interests in Luxembourg. Mr. Barber said that he had met the Foreign Ministers of the Six individually but had had only general discussions. He had not wanted to get involved in details at that stage, either on Commonwealth matters or on any matters which were specifically U.K. matters. This was because the present Government has only been in office twelve days, and apart from settling the general lines of the opening statement they had not had the opportunity of considering the details of these complex matters. What he had tried to make clear was that this was the third time in effect that Britain had applied to join the EEC, and that if we did not succeed this time, he could not see an approach being made again for a very long time.
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/8.