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3. As you know, our work in connection with decolonisation derives partly from Chapter XI of the Charter, and partly from the activities of the Committee of 24. The policy of accelerated decolonisation offered the prospect of absolving HMG from the chore of accounting for developments in each of the non-disputed territories under Article 73(e) of the Charter, and from the time-consuming debates, with their potential for trouble-making and embarrassment for HMG, in the Committee of 24 and the General Assembly. But it is now clearer than it was that we will have a number of territories on our hands for a long time to come. Our post-1973 relationship with the Committee of 24 has brought dividends, but I see no reason to prolong it unnaturally. We should rather take advantage of the fact that we are now well placed to take the initiative over the handling by the UN of the not-to-be independent territories.
4. Our objective should be to secure approval by the General Assembly that the "solution" in each case constitutes an appropriate and acceptably full measure of self-government. A resolution recognising this and acknowledging that the people of the Territory had exercised its right to self-determination would be required. The territory would then be struck off the list of non-self-governing territories and our obligation to transmit Article 73(e) information would lapse.
I suggest that the time has come for HMG to decide on a policy for each territory, and then to sell it through the Committee of 24 to the UN. In this way we should be able to disengage in the way we wish and as far as is desirable in each case, while discharging our obligation in UN eyes to decolonise.
5. I have to make assumptions about individual territories and in the continuing absence of the territorial studies commissioned in the Secretary of State's despatch HX2/1 of 13 June 1975, I may make mistakes. I assume first that the "alternative solutions" (paragraph 11 of Annex A of that despatch), namely (a) association with the UK, a regiona grouping or a third power, (b) integration with a third power or the UK, and (c) continued dependence, have none of them been ruled out, but that UN trusteeship and abandonment have. Secondly, I cannot see third powers or regional groupings inheriting our responsibilities, so I assume that the list is reduced to association or integration with the UK, and continued dependence.
Thirdly,
I assume that those territories for which a UN policy needs to be worked out are those which are undisputed but for whom separate independence is unlikely or may be slow in
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/coming,