布政司署
香港下亞厘畢道
SECRET
* Our Ref.:
SCR L/M 32/77
來函檔號 YOUR REF.:
HKK 404/1 Mr Dayed
D F Milton Esq
And you
Punque uite
Hong Kong & General Departmen
F CO
IN
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
20 May, 1977
EROD N
00. 51
23M.Y 1977
LAD
Dru
NICK GOV/
2315.
N
LAUT CIF
Dear Derek,
YES?
all
CONGOLESE DOCUMENTS AND THE GREAT SUITCASE MYSTERY
Thank you for your letter of 29 April about the
Congolese suitcase.
2.
You will now have seen Arthur's letter of 27 April to Charles Drace-Francis enclosing a copy of the Note Verbale of 13 April from the Congolese Embassy in Kinshasa.
3.
On the Congolese Note, one of the difficulties was that the suitcase which turned up at Kai Tak Airport last year had no address or label on it to give any clue to the owners. There was no diplomatic bag "lying around" in Hong Kong, and no rules concerning diplomatic mail were broken, since the 10 envelopes containing the documents were found inside an abandoned suitcase which no one had claimed for nine months.
4.
I am sending with this letter an envelope containing the 10 envelopes. We think that the best thing to do would be for you to return these documents to the Congolese. This could be done as a courtesy, either in London, Paris or Kinshasa.
5.
If this is acceptable to you, the suitcase and the rest of the contents, minus the arms and ammunition, should simultaneously be returned to Air France via Jardines. The commercial people and the airlines can haggle over who pays the charges incurred through the non-claiming of the suitcase since July 1976. There is no point in involving either you or me in the matter of handling charges. Air France must bear some responsibility here, and they and HACTL should be left to sort matters out.
6.
There remains the problem of the disposal of the five revolvers and 170 rounds of ammunition, which have by any count been imported to Hong Kong illegally.
The problem
SECRET
/contd..