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Mr Edwards
Mr Loa
• CRE 2
CR T
Ir Allott
CNE 1
Ir Ingram
CR. 1
Fir Hagestadt
CIC 3
Liss Welch
CRE
BU(O) PALER ON UK TEXTILE TOLICY IN EUROFE
95/0
1
Please see Miss Lelch's minute below.
2
The news it contains, taken in conjunction with the laut paragrega of your own circular minute of 22 August to the Members of the Textile Lorking larty, frankly bewilders me. I had understood that the UK's position was as follows:
(1) that we wanted to ensure that the low cost toxtile burden was more evenly spread in the EBC than at present; but that it had been accepted that Mr Nicoll's letter of 23 July had effectively blown the gaff that 'free circulation' was a Communautaire way of achieving this;
(ii) that we recognised the Community's GGP duty-free offer was in its own way equally artificial; that even for India and Pakistan, let alone for Hong Kong which is excluded from the offer, the important thing was increased access to the markets of the Six. That being so, there was no reason why the UK should be conned into accepting a new and in toto relatively greater burden than the industries of the Six when this gave only warginal benefit to our clients;
(iii) that we did not draw the conclusion from this that we should accept our obligation to align by trying to restrict that obligation to a minimum and expecting in exchange to extract an almost indecent gesture from the Six to the developing world plus free circulation in disguise, which is what hr Hope's alleged scheme adds up to. Such a tactic would surely cause us the maximum of negotiating difficulty for the minimum of thanks;
(iv) that the right course was to challenge the Community to recognise (a) the uneven burden we would carry by alignment to their GUI and (b) the overall meanness of their GSP plus quota controls unless at the same time a programme for progressive and significant increase in the total Community quota was established by the meaner brethren evening up the rest of their dutiable intake per capita to curs and the Germano. is surely what is meant by the frontal attack in Mr Lam's winute of 10 August; this is surely for wollect allies
Mr. Scarlett Miss Mar....A
Mr. Cober
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