CONFIDENTIAL
5. Holbrook agreed that Hong Kong had a particularly serious problem; and (on hearing from us about the discussion at the Jakata Conference) agreed that our request that the "island processing centre" should take refugees from Hong Kong was "a very fair proposition".
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6. Because of the importance of the refugee problem, State Department had suggested to Henry Owen that he recommend to the President that the issue be raised at the Tokyo Summit.
Japan
7. Japan, not China, must be the centre of US policy in Asia. The Americans' political, economic and strategic stake in Japan was immense. The Americans were therefore determined to reject any suggestion by the EEC that they should gang up together over Japanese trade policies: that would be "disasterous" and out of the question amongst other things because of the racial overtones. The British needed to get this into perspective; opinion polls showed that the American people regarded Saudi Arabia as the country most important to America; followed immediately by Japan. The United Kingdom came number 15. In particular we should not make a great fuss at the Tokyo Summit; this was the first time the Japanese had hosted such a major international occasion, and "bashing the host" would have unfortunate political consequences. It was in the interests of Europe as well as America to be understanding of the Japanese in all this.
8. We agreed that the United States was clearly far more important than Europe to Japan. This meant that, whatever the long term convergence interest, there was liable to be a divergence in the shorter term on trade matters between America and Europe. The Japanese would naturally tend to offer their concessions to the Americans, and say that they had no more room to help us. The Europeans were bound to take this seriously. Holbrook agreed that the Tokyo Summit could be regarded as an occasion for "pleasing the guests" rather than "bashing the hosts" and said that the Japanese were already thinking in those terms.
RaBraithi
18 May 1979
CONFI
RQ Braithwaite Planning Staff