Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1
CONFIDENTIAL
Telephone 01- 930 8440 Ext 144
DJ McCarthy Esq CMG United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations New York
Your reference
Our reference
Date 16 January 1973
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REPORTS ON HONG KONG TO UN BODIES
1. Following our earlier correspondence on this subject, Ministers have decided that HMG should no longer transmit information on Hong Kong to the UN Secretary-General as specified under Article 73(e) of the UN Charter, once the General Assembly had approved a recommendation by the Committee of 24 that Hong Kong should be removed from the list of territories to which the Declaration on Decolonisation applied.
2. Other recipients of this letter may not be aware of the background to this decision, which was as follows. The Peoples' Republic of China was manoeuvred into a position in the Committee of 24 where they had to place on record their view that Hong Kong, being an integral part of China, was not a colonial territory and therefore could not be entitled to self- determination or independence; and that, as this was an "internal" question coming under Article 2(7) of the Charter, it was not of concern to the UN. This was done in a letter to the Chairman of the Committee of 24, dated 8 March 1972.
3. The Chinese may, therefore, feel impelled to challenge further HMG's right to report on behalf of Hong Kong in other UN bodies, and we have been studying HMG's reporting responsibilities in this connection so as to:
a)
reduce the possibility of Chinese challenges to our right to report, and,
b)
ensure that reporting required by Treaty obligations is presented in such a way as to stay the hand of the
Chinese (or their over-zealous allies) in challenging such reporting;
CONFIDENTIAL
/c)