been time between Mr Haddon-Cave's two visits to London to agree on the terms of an acceptable agreement and that the unofficial advisers should not have been put in the position of coming to London without the guarantee of such a successful conclusion to the negotiations. We parted amicably but without their being shaken in their intention to speak to Mr Royle in the sense they had spoken to me.
6.
Mr Wilford and I discussed the situation at approx 1240 hrs after the end of the morning talks at the DTI. Mr Wilford said that the meeting had opened with Mr Haddon Cave accepting "in principle" the proposals put by the DTI on the night before subject to agreement on two provisos relating respectively to "hardship cases" and to the institutional effects on the trade of the combination of tariffs and quotas". In discussion on the first of these, Mr Haddon Cave had accepted that the UK had to assess the global extent of "hardship" before coming to a decision as regards Hong Kong but the DTI had assured him that they were "sympathetic" to the Hong Kong case: the discussion on the second had turned to examining how far the sub-division of the "Made-Up" category could be brought into line with the EEC sub-divisions. UK side were examining this further over the lunch hour with a view to answering Mr Haddon Cave at 1500 hrs. It was the agreed intention to work through until agreement was reached and embodied in an exchange of letters ad referendum.
7.
The
We agreed that Mr Royle should be briefed to say to Sir S. Gordon and Mr K.Y. Kan that we had reached a position in which Mr Haddon Cave had put forward counter-proposals which seemed
to the UK side to be negotiable: that the UK side had worked through the lunch hour and were to reply that afternoon with the intention of working through until agreement was reached and embodied in an exchange of letters ad referendum. If they raised the question of the time-table, Mr Royle could say that the timing of meetings had been amicably agreed throughout to meet the
convenience of both sides. I briefed Mr Royle accordingly at 1450 hrs.
8.
About 1750 hrs Mr Wilford phoned me to say that agreement
seemed to have been reached. At the end of the afternoon discussion
Mr Haddon Cave had withdrawn to telephone Mr Cater who was with the
advisers. He had subsequently returned to start drafting the
/letters