CONFIDENTIAL
21/1
K Parry Esq
Overseas Finance Planning Division
Department of Trade
1 Victoria Street
London SW1H OFT
de 51
нкк 21/12
3 December 1974
Go
In
Please refer to your letter OPG 300 of 22 November. view of the contents of Falls telegram Exced 31 and Haddon- Cave's reply, I arranged, as reported in my telegram Exced 34 to Fall, to see Haddon-Cave to ask how things stood and to try to find out whether the Hong Kong Government had any contingency
In the plans if the negotiations with the Japanese failed. event I did not see him until last Friday as he had other commitments, but this gave me the opportunity to discuss the position briefly with the Governor as well.
a)
2. What Haddon-Cave had to say can be summarized as follows:
The plenary session due to take place in Japan at the beginning of November was cancelled pending examination of the "main proposals document" which had been brought down to Hong Kong by a team of Japanese engineers,
b)
e)
a)
•)
The Hong Kong Government had insisted so far on the performance criteria being strictly adhered to.
Haddon-Cave had made a mistake in judgment in saying publicly that he hoped that negotiations would be completed by the mutumn. This would have been quite unrealistic however well the negotiations had gone,because of the sheer volume of detailed work involved. Failure to conclude an agreement by this date had inevitably led to speculation and rumour that things were not going well.
It was quite true that there were difficulties within the Japanese censortium,
Negotiations were still proceeding and he had no reason to believe they would fail.
/3. I told
CONFIDENTIAL