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CONFIDENTIAL
BRITISH EMBASSY
BANGKOK
26 February 1973
RB Harvey Esq
Far Eastern Department
FCO
LONDON SW1
ولا لا
فلش
LUND Do you have any comments foot?
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Enter + submit
Mr Davies for draft
reply pl.
73
Dear Harvey,
HONG KONG AND ECAFE
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1. I do not think that there is much that I can helpfully add from here at present by way of comment on George's letter of 9 February. We are as much in the dark as any- one about the way in which the Chinese are likely to behave at Tokyo particularly since we have not ourselves seen an account of the recent developments in the Committee of 24. The indications that we have had here of likely Chinese behaviour have come from U Nyun following talks which he had with Chinese representatives in Geneva and New York a few months ago. I reported this at the time.
2. Briefly, he reported that he had found the Chinese exercised over the problems likely to be presented by their presence in a body in which South Vietnam and South Korea were represented but not their northern counterparts. Their first reaction had been that they would have to stamp out of the Committee every time a representative of one of those countries spoke. U Nyun pointed out that if so, they would be giving themselves a lot of unnecessary exercise. There was some later indication that the Chinese had taken note of the device used by the Russians of merely making a formal statement of protest at the beginning of a meeting (which was equally formally rebutted) and thereafter getting on with the job.
3. Unless their record since then at more recent UN meetings suggests that they are adopting a harder line I should have hoped that we could have got by at Tokyo with a formal protest and rebuttal on these lines. I realise that the Chinese objection to Hong Kong would be of a different nature from the objection to Korea and Vietnam but we might neverthe- less be able to ride them all out together in the same way. This is a much as George hopes in the third paragraph of his letter.
14. There is
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