Miss Brown
No. A sement N Thompson
fair
PAC
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Butler
UK/AUSTRALIA AIR SERVICES
398
any problems for the Hong Kong angle? 1977.
HKK 184/1
RECEN
INDEX
10 JUL 1978
No late
A
حملة
At the end of the recent talks with Australfan officials,
the UK delegation "undertook to put the Australian proposals to their Ministers as a matter of urgency, explaining that the
Australian Government required a British commitment in principle
before approaching any other countries". The two delegations
agreed that they should meet again as soon as possible.
2. We are still awaiting DOT's approval of the draft submission
at A including the draft reply to the Australians.
Meanwhile I
should be grateful for your reactions and those of Mr Murray to
the drafts as they stand.
3. The draft reply to the Australians is designed to give the
Australians a little, but not to prejudice our ability to retreat
if the reaction of third countries is unexpectedly tough and in particular if there are signs of their ganging up against the scheme.
Mr Rogers is likely to argue that we should be much more forthcoming.
Although it is in our interests for the Australians to make
most of the running with third countries so as to draw their fire,
we would need to tell India, Malaysia, and Thailand that, if the
scheme was implemented, we would not want to cut their airline's
services to London. We would also want to assure Indonesia that
4.
/her
CONFIDENTIAL