3.
As you know the SEATO Meeting is now being held at a
time when the Secretary of State could not combine his attendance at the academic functions in Hong Kong with his attendance at SEATO, so that we are back to square one and have now to consider whether another Minister could attend the occasion.
4. You undertook to consider whether it would be possible for Mr Wood to go to Hong Kong for the purposes set out in David Trench's letter of 29 April. If I may say so his presence would be appropriate both because of the contribution from Aid Funds to the Science Centre and because of the general ODA interest in Overseas Commonwealth Universitics. I am told by the Hong Kong Department here that there is some doubt in the ODA over possible embarrassment to Mr Wood if he visited Hong Kong because you have no Aid Programme in the territory. I do not myself think that too much need be made of this and am sure that if there had been any such risk David Trench would have been the last person to suggest that an ODA Minister attend the opening of the Science block. After all, there has been Aid money put into the Centre and we have recently explained to the unofficial members of the Executive Council in Hong Kong that while we have to meet the calls upon HMG for Financial Aid on a system of priorities based on need and consequently find difficulty in assisting Hong Kong financially with ito development programmes it would be wrong to assume that we would not be ready to consider assisting Hong Kong in some appropriate way if an urgent need for such assistance were to arise at some specific time and a specific case were put forward.
5.
The alternative suggested in David Trench's letter of 29 April was a Minister responsible. for Educational Affairs. We have .consulted the DES at Under-Secretary level but the feeling there is
that this would not really be an appropriate occasion for Mrs Thatcher to attend as she is comparatively little concerned with Education
overseas.
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