v)
CONFIDENTIAL
6
DSR 11C
and are useful in keeping them freer than they would
otherwise be of North/South rhetoric; and at law
Ministers Meetings; and sometimes at Finance Ministers
Meetings; but less value at recent education and
agriculture Ministers Meetings.
The Commonwealth provides support and encouragement
particularly through the work of the Commonwealth
Parliamentary Association
to its members in the
-
meantenance of democratic systems: though this of course
is far from decisive.
10. These advantages are not crucial to our interests but
they help. At a time when the world is tending to organise
itself into blocks of like-minded countries (NATO, EC,
Warsaw Pact, OPEC) the Commonwealth stands out as an informal
multi-racial and on the whole harfmonius organisation.
The Soviet Union would no doubt be delighted to be involved in
such a voluntary association of nations ranging across the
political specturm; and France under Mitterand is making more
of the Franco-African summit, though France remains firmly
at the centre of the arrangements and determines their shape.
More generally, the Commonwealth is an advertisement
for the strenth and flexibility of the Western as opposed to
the Soviet approach to international relations.
11.
i)
ii)
The disadvantages of the Commonwealth include:
Commonwealth meetings, particularly CHGMs, take up a
great deal of Ministers' and senior officials' time:
CHGM takes up twice as much time as any comparable
meeting attended by the Prime Minister.
We tend to be in a small minority of white Commonwealth
countries at Commonwealth meetings, and do not even
always get the support of Canada and Australia, who see
the Commonwealth as providing an opportunity for them to
act as a bridge between North and South, We tend to have