E.R.
CONFIDENTIAL
NOTE OF A MEETING HELD AT FCO ON THURSDAY, 24 JULY 1975
130
1. A further meeting was held at FCO on Thursday, 24 July at 11 am to follow up the earlier meeting of 25 June recorded in the FCO note of 27 June. Mr Alan Worton, FCO, Mr E I Lee and Mr J P Law, Hong Kong
and G I de Deney, Home Office, took part.
Thai
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in
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2. FCO's consultations with MOD, Hong Kong, Peking and Bangkok had produced preliminary replies and these were available. The most cautious came from Hong Kong itself. As regards the first scheme a retired police officer on a RN vessel none of those consulted saw any superable difficulty of principle. As regards the second scheme a Thai vessel stationed at Hong Kong various difficulties political, legal, financial and operational appeared to be sufficiently substantial to rule this out of consideration. A common theme in the
replies was that for the implementation of the first scheme it would be highly desirable that this should rest on a formal agreement with the Thai Government (the other party of this agreement would be the United Kingdom).
3.
The discussion suggested that before an approach was made to the Thai Government for the negotiation of such an agreement it would be desirable to have explored various aspects of such a scheme to ensure that the approach to Thailand was based on something which would be likely to be workable and in which all the foreseeable contin-
gencies had been catered for and which would also clarify what role we should expect the Thais to play under such an agreement and what responsibilities we should expect them to undertake.
4. It became apparent that some aspects of the scheme affect the Hong Kong Government and these could only be explored more fully when the Hong Kong representatives had returned to the Colony. A very substantial aspect of the arrangements, however, would depend on the co-operation of the Royal Navy and the extent to which they would be able to play a part. The larger part of the discussion accordingly concentrated on this aspect to enable FCO to make a further more detailed approach to MOD.
5. The operation was examined in various stages. The assumption was that reliable intelligence from Bangkok would disclose that a
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CONFIDENTIAL