ли
Mr Davis, que Huy
Как
Foreign and Commonwealth Office Mu. Tarpor (sousrally,
London SW1A 2AH
MD Huebner Esq
Telephone 01- 233 3701
Your referance
Euler 'A.K. Dochin'
and (?) also
General Lachen.
I had a hand
Lord Chancellor's Office
RECEIVED IN
Our reference
67 Tufton Street
London
i
SW1P 3RG
REGISTRY NO. 51 23 JUN1977
Date
22 June 1977 ui tas
HHILL 301/502/1
REF.
Ne.T
REF.
COMMONWEALTH LAW MINISTERS' MEETING
1.
drafting y this
تكللها
Dim
We have spoken once or twice about the attached letter from the 22/6.
Attorney-General of Hong Kong about the possibility of his attending the Commonwealth Law Miniuters' Meeting in Winnipeg in August.
2. I have been delaying action on Hobley's letter until I could discuss it with Kutlu Fuad at the Commonwealth Secretariat, since the participation of dependent territories at these particular conferences would be a departure from past practice. I have now spoken to him on his return to his office after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. His personal view is that since thre is no intention that Hong Kong should be invited to the meeting in her own right but that the Hong Kong representative would form part of the British delegation, this is really a matter for the British Government to decide: he cannot imagine that any Law Minister would feel entitled to object to the inclusion of any particular individual in our delegation. He stressed that this was his personal view and that he would have to seek the views of the Commonwealth Secretary-General if we were to propose the inclusion of dependent territory representatives in the British delegation, ht he thought that Mr Ramphal's views would correspond with his own.
3. Thus we have to decide amongst ourselves how we should respond to the Hong Kong request, and our decision must, I think, primarily depend on the wishes of the Lord Chancellor. If you agree, I should be grateful if you could seek his views. I am copying this letter to de Winton (Law Officer's Department) and Moran (Lord Advocate's Department) in case they feel that they should seek the views of their Ministers also.
4. The view of the political department here is that the arguments Hobley advances in favour of Hong Kong's participating in the meeting are sound and that he would both benefit from and perhaps be able to make a useful contribution to the meeting.
5.
The difficulty is that if we permitted Hong Kong to attend, I think we should feel obliged to tell catain other dependent territories about the meeting and give them the opportunity to send representatives to it if they so wished. I am thinking of Bermuda and possibly Belize. Also, given that the Solomons, the Gilberts and Tuvalu (formerly Ellice Island) are all well on the road to independence perhaps we should give them the opportunity to attend also (although I think it doubtful whether any of the latter three territories would in the event send representatives). /It