(145181) Dd. 737490 750M 1/71 Hw.
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
Registry
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION,
(
Top Secret. Secret.
DRAFT
To:-
Type 1 +
From
Secretary of State Telephone No. & Ext.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
Dame Joan Vickers MP
House of Commons
Department
Thank you for your letter of 19 July enclosing a copy
of a memorandum from a group of Hong Kong Chinese about
the Tiaoyutai Islands.
The Islands, which are more commonly known by their Japanese name, the Senkaku Islands, have been since 1945 administered by the USA as part of the Ryukyu Islands
and are due to revert to Japanese control with the
Ryukyus in 1972. However claims to sovereignty over the Senkakus have been advanced by both the Nationalist authorities in Taiwan and the People's Republic of
China. The dispute is one of considerable complexity
and we have taken no public position upon it.
As you may have seen from the written reply which Anthony Royle gave on 12 July to a question which John Biggs-Davison put down in the House on the
subject, neither the Cairo Declaration, Potsdam Declaration, nor any binding international agreement deals in express terms with the status or future of
the Senkaku Islands.
Even if agreement were reached about sovereignty over the Islands, this would only be the first step towards resolving the further dispute of the rights
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