in the following terms:
"We can state that no case of death or injury has been reported among those detained prior to appearing in court, and we can also give the assurance that none of them has been sent to
the front line."
Your letter also suggests that the Government have aborted an EEC initiative on political asylum for Chilean refugees. I assure you that this report is completely inaccurate. We have already agreed with our Community partners that if death sentences are passed in Chile we shall all make representations to the Junta. When the four death sentences in question were passed, the French Presidency made a new suggestion that in addition we should all declare our willingness to offer sanctuary to all those whose death or prison sentence was commuted and sent into exile instead. This raised some difficulty because it has long been our policy to consider each application for entry to the UK separately. We therefore said to the French that we had some reservations about that particular point, though of course we warmly supported the idea of coordinated representations about the death sentences themselves.
I should perhaps add that several other governments shared our reservations about that part of the French proposal. What is perfectly clear is that we in no way rejected the general proposal for joint representations. And we are now considering once more whether there is any way round the particular difficulty presented by the French proposal.
Your Committee may be interested to know that in recent months 719 Chilean refugees have been given permission to come to this country (to date 185 have
/actually