RECOVED IN
REGISTRY No.51
12X6/1
CONFIDENTIAL Reference
Mr Chewley
bur hamdrat;
1.
1967
"F.i.& inchision with other HK Kennedy papers.
Jay 16.
When Mr Bottomley originally asked to see Sir D Trench he had in mind of course that it would be useful to exchange views on the talks between Hong Kong and Ambassador Kennedy. With those talks postponed to next week there was not a great deal Cozó be said.
2. Mr Bottomley opened the discussion by saying that he thought that the general view in Whitehall was that in their negotiations with Ambassador Kennedy Hong Kong would presumably wish to follow the lead set by the Japanese. The Governor agreed. Hong Kong wished to demonstrate their willingness to co-operate with the Americans. At the same time they attached considerable importance to the injury criteria of the GATT and also to the principle that there should be no discrimination against Hong Kong. Mr Sellers, who was present, added that Hong Kong wished to negotiate some kind of "roll-in" - a mixture of fibres if possible.
3. It was thought generally that if both Hong Kong and Taiwan introduced restraints similar to those adopted by the Japanese this would probably be sufficient to hold the position in the United States. The negotiations were not however going to be easy for Hong Kong, particularly as the Taiwanese had made a distinction between knitted and woollen goods and because it seemed likely that the Koreans would not wish to have cottons and non-cottons treated together.
4.
There was some talk about the Japanese offer under the generalised preference scheme. How much will it be worth? Mr Bottomley explained to the Governor that he had made it clear to the Japanese after the meeting between the Secretary of State and Mr Aichi that if Mr Aichi had not confirmed that Hong Kong would be included in the Japanese offer the Secretary of State would have felt compelled to say that we would have had to reconsider the inclusion in our scheme of other dependencies.
5.
There was also some talk about the American offer under the generalised preference scheme. Mr Bottomley said that his impression was that there was less "protectionism" in the US now than there had been a year ago. As against that there was also less interest in aid" generally (and the GPS scheme was of course a form of aid) The Governor agreed, saying that there seemed to be a revulsion in the US against aid as a result of misuse of aid funds in the past.
11
17 June 1971
타
E O Laird
DD 737719 557664 500M 2/71 GM 3643/2
CONFIDENTIAL