11 copy Ms. Jesper HSD.
I should be grateful for
any views
Ruiseñan
28.12.
Mrs. Wiseman
Pl. speak.
United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations
845 Third Avenue New York NY 10022
2) enter e
resulent with
MK O Simpson-Orlebar Esq
Your reference
UN Department
FCO
Our reference
HKG 025/3 нка
Date 22 December 1977
был
28/x
30DEC1977
Yas JJ.
ear Michaet COMMITTEE OF 24 -1978 SESSION
все
1. We are beginning to put cur thoughts in order for the forthcoming session of the Committee of 24 and particularly for its sub-committee on small territories.
2.
When the Committee resume its business at the end of next month, there is no doubt that there will be the usual pressure upon us, and to a lesser extent upon the Americans, to invite a visiting mission of the Committee to visit one of our dependent.territories. As you know, we have felt in the past that our policy of cooperation with the Committee has paid dividends; we have entertained visiting missions every year for the last four years. However, we see problems in repeating this exercise in 1978.
3. On purely practical grounds the choice of unvisited territories is becoming more limited. With the independence during 1978 of the Solomons, and hopefully of the Gilberts and Tuvalu, this would leave only the New Hebrides in the Pacific as a possible candidate, and a visit to the New Hebrides has already, quite properly in our view, been discounted.
4. In the Caribbean area, of the territories which we regard as lying within the purview of the Committee of 24, only the Turks and Caicos (and Bermuda) have received no recent visit and we see little point in repeating visits to territories which in some cases were only persuaded with difficulty to accept visiting missions in the first place. Additionally, the treatment by the Committee of 24 of the report of the visiting mission to the Cayman Islands gives, I think, some cause for concern. Until the difficulties which we experienced this year in persuading the Committee to "approve" the report of the visiting mission, it was accurate to say that the Committee was gradually coming round to adopting a sensible and pragmatic view of the need of some small territories to exercise their rights to self-determination in a manner which might not extend to total independence.
CONFIDENTIAL
/5.