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SECRET
12.
Consultation with our partners and Allies outside NATO should begin, we believe, shortly after we have taken our informal bilateral soundings with the Americans. Different considerations would ́ apply in different cases but we see no major problems in aiming to complete these consultations in time for announcements in a White Faper in November. In order to avoid damaging the delicate balance of confidence in various dependent territories and among our Allies it would be important to conduct the consultations with discretion while at the same time making clear in most cases that full consultetion has in fact taken place.
Intelligence
13. we have several important intelligence interests overseas which we cannot avow. The Americans have recently and in the context of the Defence Review underlined to us the importance to them of our facilities in Cyprus, Hong Kong, and Hasirah. Some of the tasks undertaken by these intelligence facilities could not be
carried out at all from elsewhere. Estimates show that the costr
of re-providing elsewhere such facilities as could ne duplicated would be very high. Decisions affecting the three facilities mentioned might well therefore have a caring on the continuance of our unique intelligence relationship with the Americans, in which the balance of advantage is ruch on our side.
I
14. The intelligence facilities at ng kong should tresent no problems so long as we can maintain control of the internal security situation there. ng changes we rake in our military dispositions in Cyprus and Oman/l.asirah could raise greater roblems. This is one of the arguments (though subsidiary to the main one of avoiding serious tension and fighting between the Greeks, Turks and Cypriots) for retaining both Sovereign Base Areas. 46 regarde Lasirah, a reduced RAF presence on the island should suffice to support both our intelligence and our re-broadcasting facilitien. It should also be possible to negotiate with the Sultan the termination of the RAF obligation to operate Salalah airfield (which is at present linked with the retention of facilities on lasirah). As well as the Salalah detachment, we should be able to withdraw from Oman the Royal Engineers, and the SAS, leaving only the loan Service personnel for whom the Sultan in any case pays. But in gradually reducing our direct military support to him it will be necessary to avoid damaging our relations with the Americans, and with Iran, Saudi Arabia and possibly other Arab States.
ZEIZATATAT