;
SECRET
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1
Mr. Düwiddy
the
PA'
A F Thorp Esq, OBE Head of F1 (AIR) Ministry of Defence Whitehall
London SW1
Telephon" 01-
همه
Your reference
Our reference HKK 10/7
Date
8 May 1974
یا اور
Dear Thorp,
HONG KONG'S DEFENCE CONTRIBUTION
1.
2.
Thank you for your letter of 19 April.
As you know, apart from minor amendments and with the exception of paragraph 6 (amended following discussions I had with yourself, Aggleton and Scholar), we accepted the revised draft of the letter which you circulated. You have a copy of the final version Andrew Stuart sent to the Governor on 24 April.
3.
29
I am writing now about the revised record of the meeting on 29 March which also circulated with your letter. We have compared the two versions of the record and are willing to agree that your paragraphs 1-5 and 7 should replace paragraphs 1-5 of our original record circulated with my letter of 5 April. Scholar has, however, asked that paragraph 6 in your draft should read:
4.
"6. Mr Scholar said that Ministers had committed themselves to cutting defence expenditure. These reductions might well involve Hong Kong, perhaps to an extensive degree. There were many options. The Defence Review was expected to be completed by July."
Andrew Stuart has asked me to say that after the preamble to the conclusions in your paragraph 8, he wishes to retain the wording of our 6(a) in place of your 8(b) We can replace the wording of our 6(b) and 6(c) by your 8(c and (d).
•
5.
This, as you will see, leaves out your 8(a), which we do not agree was a conclusion reached at the meeting. In particular, the FCO did not accept that a review was needed urgently.
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BECRET
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