SECRET & PERSONAL
of 9 April 1969 to Bunny Carter you
said tha refer to the
D
fence assing a separate issue (I am not clear what
you meant by the and in his letter of 2 October 197
Jeaffreson saidy
A
"we consider the fence to be a matter of external
rather than internal security and thus a proper
charge to HM Government."
roch
epp out, ith the
and went on to ask us to take up the matter with the
is mar
Treasury on Hong Kong's behalf.
Since by that time
we were well into the negotiations over the defence
contribution we decided that it would be wiser from
everyone's point of view not to run the risk of
complicating those already difficult negotiations by
introducing this extraneous factor. Accordingly the
present position is that we have not yet raised the
M.P.4/1
matter with the Treasury but we she now have to
the Treesing
de sol(together with the other outstanding items)
мод
since we are being hard pressed by the Ministry of
Defonee for reimbursement of their votes; y purpose
votes; My purpose
in writing to you now is to let you know how we in
the FCO view the situation and to agree with you
the line we should take in our discussions with the
Treasury.
5. The Frontier Fence. Our information of the
Les
Wass
circumstances in which the fence came to be built is
colo
confined to that given in Hong Kong telegram number
1320 of 29 August 1967. Frankly, we are not at all
happy about Hong Kong's position over this item.
it was Although the Hong Kong telegram in question stated
that "the object of this obstacle will be to stop
land incursions of all kinds" there seems to us to be
little doubt that the primary purpose of the fence
2.
SECRET & PERSONAL
/was
E
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN