:
CONFIDENTIAL
United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations 845 Third Avenue New York NY 10022
A M Goodenough Esq
MAED
FCO
Dear Goodenough,
CONTACT GROUP ON AVIATION SECURITY
0:0
Your reference
Our referenca
Date 10 March 1978
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1. Since both Paul Fifoot and Sheila Harden were engaged in Charter Review, I attended on their behalf the meetings on 8 and 9 March called by the Netherlands Mission (copy of the irvitation and our reply enclosed). De Meester from the Hague chaired the meetings and after briefly mentioning that the Governments of all the delegates invited had given prior approval to taking part in the formation of a Contact Group, circulated a list of the 88 countries who have not yet ratified one or more of the three Civil Aviation Conventions and attempted to bulldoze delegates into declaring the names of capitals in which their Governments would be prepared to join a formal demarche. had a predictable effect on many of the delegates (full list enclosed) some of whom were not even aware that the Netherlands and the Orcanizing Group had approached their Foreign Ministris. The Dutch were strongly supported by the American team but the majority view, reacting perhaps to this pressure, advocated caution and seized on an Australian warning, submitted by their ICAO representative, that the Group should be careful not to cut across the current ICAO exercise.
This
2. No consensus was reached on the form the demarche should take and the meeting was adjourned. On resumption the Chairman finally convinced delegates to go through the list in an attempt to discover which countries would be prepared to act where. Certain countries, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina and Sweden amongst them, stated at the cutset that although it was more than likely that their respective Governments would wish to be associated in the lobbying exercise, they would not be prepared to commit their Governments without instructions even on an Ad Referendum basis. France indicated that it was not prepared to take part in a joint demarche but was happy to act bilaterally in several of the capitals. There was of course no objection, the French delegate added, to other countries taking similiar bilateral action. We made the points contained in para 4 of your telno 539.
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