Mr O'Keeffe
CONFIDENTIAT
Reference..
30
HONG KONG : ASSISTANCE TO THE POLYTECHNIC
1.
24
CODE 18-77
Please see the minutes by Mr Wade-Brown and Mrs Johnson (below) and the draft submission they have prepared on the above subject.
2. The draft submission has been cleared with interested parties in the ODM. I accepted the first of Mrs Johnson's proposed amendments (that to paragraph 2) but I would prefer paragraph 25 to be completely redrafted and attach a form of words. made one or two other minor amendments in manuscript.
I have
3. I must admit to some doubt about this whole exercise. As you will see from paragraph 25 of the draft, it sprang from a political decision taken by the previous government. The delay of 2 years from the announcement of this aid project and the present submission results mainly, I am told, from dilatoriness on the part of the Hong Kong authorities. One is left with the impression that, for them, the original gesture was perhaps more important than the project itself. I think it is quite possible that the ODM Projects Committee will draw a similar conclusion and that either they, or Mrs Hart herself, will question the whole project on these grounds. It is true that a commitment to provide the aid was publicly entered into by an FCO junior minister in November 1972, but he was a member of a different (Conservative) government.
4.
Nevertheless, the commitment does devolve on us and we would be failing in our duty if we did not put the project forward, notwithstanding the doubts I have expressed above. I therefore recommend that the draft submission, as amended, should issue.
8 April 1975
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Hong Kong and Indian Ocean Department
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redraft of paragraph
25 which I have sangeet to stringther here and there.
CONFIDENTIAN
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