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Mr O'Keeffe Duft til im
حسن
HONG KONG:
DEFENCE CONTRIBUTION
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1.
I think you should be aware of the circumstances leading to thes draft telegram, which I recommend should issue. The matter could con- ceivably cause difficulties between Hong Kong and ourselves.
For
2. On 8 February this year the Hong Kong Secretary of Security, Mr Davies, wrote to Mr Dinwiddy saying that it might be useful, "in presenting any case for any increase" in Hong Kong's percentage contribution towards the cost of defence which may emerge from the Defence Review, if the Hong Kong Government could be advised of the practice in the past in colonies generally over contributions towards defence. Mr Davies did not say specifically to whom the case he refers to should be presented, but it is, I think, implicit in his letter that it would be the case for Hong Kong making a defence con- tribution to be presented to the Hong Kong public after the revised contribution from 1976 onwards had been fixed.
3.
In response to Mr Davies' request, I sent a minute to the colonial expert in Research Department, Mr Bennett, seeking his assistance. Mr Bennett responded with a minute dated 19 February in which he pointed out that a lot of time and work would be required to do our enquiry justice. Nevertheless, he provided a certain amount of information and asked whether we would like him to take the project on. He made it dear that he would not like all the information that he had thus far provided to be sent to Hong Kong because, as he put it, "it contains some scripture which the devil ..... might quote against us".
SAIR
4. In reply, I thanked Mr Bennett for the information he had provided, asked him to take on the project when he had time, and pointed out that, in the circumstances, it was only proper that I should sent Hong Kong an interim reply. I attached a draft which reflected, in very general terms, a few of the points which Mr Bennett had made in his minute of 19 February. But in a minute dated 27 February Mr Bennett made clear that he thought it unwise to give any information to Hong Kong on this subject. At this stage, we received a telegram from Hong Kong prodding us for a reply to Mr Davies' letter. The draft telegram below is in response to this.
5.
The problem we face is that Mr Bennett, who has very wide colonial experience, suspects that the enquiry by Hong Kong is a trick in the sense that the Colony are trying to obtain the information they seek in order to use it against us in the forthcoming negotiations on a Hong Kong defence contribution, rather than use it to justify an agreed Hong Kong defence contribution to the Hong Kong public ex post facto. Mr Bennett takes the view that, this being so, it is not for us to provide Hong Kong with ammunition. He evidently feels, therefore, that the best thing to do would be to shunt this Hong Kong request into a siding and leave it there indefinitely. The draft interim reply proposed in paragraph 4 of his minute of 27 February would have this effect.
6.
My own view is that Mr Bennett may well be right in his suspicions but that, nonetheless, we have a duty to see that Hong Kong SHOULD IF POSSIBLY have the information they require, even if they do try to use it
against us. The forthcoming defence talks will not be easy but I should have thought it was in our interest that all issues should be
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