had already been reached that certain lands would be released immempective
of the defence cont agreement, and, frankly, I found that here some of the
ground inevitably had been cut away by the negotiations which had telten place
already, and so the discussions I had centred round the future of Victoria
Barracks and the future of Kei Tek. As you imow, Victoria Bemacks is a
prime site with some symbolic significence. It is right in the centre of
Hong Kong in a cormanding and rather delightful position. It consists of
43 acres of land or thereabouts. Kai Tak is similarly a prine site, because
it is next to the airport and because there is pressure to make that land
available for the growth in traffic at the airport. From the Hong Kong
point of view these are both important, and whereas Victoria Barracks ig
a very attractive site from our point of view, we also have to be concerned
in the case of Kai Tok with security considerations, and whether to surrender
it would make it more difficult for our operations simply because we did
not have proximity to the airport. In the case of Victoria Barracks I would
expect that any agreement would involve the retention of some small area of
land by us because of the need to re-provide. Although the larger part of
the re-provision of facilities at Victoria Barracks, a re-provision of which
the Hong Kong Government would pay for, would be at HIS TAMR, we would
expect to retain a small part of the site for some of the facilities there
at the present time. In the case of Kai Tak, the question arose as to
whether, in effect, we might reduce a relatively small part of Kai Tak, or
up to half, and contract into the remaining area, or whether we should
abandon Kai Tak altogether and go to Sek Kong in the new territories, which
you may have seen. Our present view is that we think, given the nature of
the site, it would ha tha right commas, ambjent to the cost of re-provision
being borne by the Hong Kong Covernment, to give up the whole of Hai Tak,
and so the agreement is likely to include giving up effectively Victoria
Bernacks, subject to the qualification I made, and giving un Kei Fok.