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From: A. F. Thorp OBE,
Our reference: Head of F1 (Air)/7913 Your reference:
A. W. Gaminara, Esq
Hong Kong Department
Head of F1 (Air)
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE Main Building, Whitehall, LONDON S.W.I
Telephone: WHItehall 7022, ext. 7189
RECEIVED IN
REGISTRY No.51
12 m. 1971
HICK 10/9
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Room 247
King Charles Street LONDON 3W1
72)
4 May 1971
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Lexa Gamean Каки
My comments on the three draft telegrams to Hong Kong forwarded with your letter, of 29 April are limited to the covering telegram which forwards the text of a message to the unofficial members and an Annex to that message.
2. I suggest changes to paragraphs 3, 4, 5 and 6 as follows:-
Paragraph 3
As worded I think there is a danger that this will be misunder- stood by the Governor who will believe that we can look at any
This could be proposal which the unofficials may care to put up. avoided if the paragraph is worded as follows:-
"I agree it should remain our object to encourage the
unofficial members to produce their own ideas as to what would be appropriate and I hope you will be able to persuade them to do this. But we may as well recognise here and now that anything which gives HMG less than £42 over the five years is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible to negotiate here."
Paragraph 4
I would suggest here that the first sentence should be replaced by the following:-
"While I would not completely rule out the idea of
extending the period of agreement, this is not likely to find favour here unless it offers some increase in the extra two years when it could be expected that there would be valid grounds for an increase on the figure of £8.5M.
no hope of acceptance of a 7-year agreement at the level you suggest in your telegram number 266."
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Paragraph 5