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consulting the Governor and Mr Cortazzi, dissuaded Sir Lawrence.
Nobody from the FCO had an opportunity to meet Sir Lawrence on his recent brief visit to London (to sign the power station contract). It would be helpful to have Mr Bray's comments on
how the visit went.
4.
You may wish to mention the proposal to hold the Heads of
Mission Conference in Hong Kong in the spring of 1979.
26 April 1978
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0.ß. Sep.
JA B Stewart
Hong Kong & General Dept
Mr Stewart
by Quytell
In the sea Upto in
W
1. I did not have a chance to talk much about Sir Lawrence Kadoorie, but covered the other two subjects.
2. On Brunei, the Governor was well aware that the heat had subsided somewhat and I said I was reasonably optimistic that we would make some progress towards a new agreement when the Sultan was here in June. The Governor said that this was Lord
Goronwy-Roberts' view too. The Governor also accepted that there was no likelihood of a rapid withdrawal of the Gurkha battalion from Brunei, at least while we continued negotiating with the Sultan (years?). He made two points. The first was that, in the opinion of his advisers, a reinforcement capability from the region was still essential. The second was that, alternatively, if the Gurkha battalion was ever withdrawn from Brunei, the best plan would be to put it into Hong Kong as a permanent reinforce- ment there, and the Hong Kong 2Government would pay. The Governor
/added,
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