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first, the U.K. interest, secondly, relations with other countries (e.g. China) and thirdly, acceptability to the
Contracting Parties. The D.T.I.representatives, suggested that to these ought to be added another, viz. fourthly,
what the enlarged E.E.C. would permit (1).
49.
There was considerable discussion on this last
point. I maintained that Hong Kong's interests centred on
two aspects:
(1)
(11)
Hong Kong must not find itself in a non-
G.A.T.T. relationship with the enlarged
E.E.C., whatever was the position so far
as the U.K. was concerned.
In the
absence of a G.A.T.T. relationship with.
the enlarged E.E.C., there would be
potentially dangerous possibilities of
the E.E.C. in effect controlling Hong Kong's
external commercial policy through the
U.K. and without Hong Kong having any
effective means of defonce in international
forums;
so long as Member States remained
separate contracting parties, I could
see no necessary difficulty in Hong Kong's
views being expressed from the U.K.
delegation. The currently developing
practice in G.A.T.T. and the C.T.C. is for an for an E.E.C. spokesman flanked by the
/ representatives of
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