B2. - 18. mar
Background
In August 1982 the Vicinam Government handed to the UK Ambassador in Hanoi an Aide Momoire stating that it was now ready to resume responsibility for areas of the Ho Chi Minh FIR temporarily assigned in 1975 to Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong, and seeking consultations with the Hong Kong aeronautical authorities to arrange for this. There would be little difficulty for the UK in the substance of the proposal that Vietnam resume responsibility for the FIR if the proposal was put forward formally in ICAO and Vietnam could establish to ICAO's satisfaction that it did now. have the capability properly to discharge its obligations in respect of the FIR. The matter does however have to be dealt· with in ICAO rather than in bilateral consultations, and we understand that the ICAO Secretariat have some doubts as to Vietnamese capabilities to operate safely the oceanic sector of the FIR.
The proposal is in any case complicated by a dispute between Vietnam and China over possession of the Paracel Islands which lie beneath that part of the Ho Chi Minh F1R currently administered by Hong Kong: if Hong Kong were to negotiate direct with Vietnam on this matter, the UK could find itself caught in the middle of a row between China and Vietnam over the sovereignty of disputed territory at a time when this could touch a raw Chinese nerve in the context of the UK's own negotiations with China over the future sovereignty of Hong Kong. The UK therefore informed the Vietnam authorities in November that we would be prepared to take the matter up in the ICAO RAN and avoided any implication that we were prepared to become involved in bilateral negotiations.
The Vietnamcse however have delivered a further Aide Memoire dated 16 November explaining that they now propose to reopen various routes in the area and asking HMG to instruct the Hong Kong Director of Civil Aviation to contact the Vietnamese aeronautical authorities and the ICAO Regional Office as soon as possible to resolve all out- standing questions of a technical nature. The UK has again replied pointing to the suitability of the ICAO RAN meeting as a forum for discussion of the matter without indicating the willingness or otherwise of Hong Kong to become involved in the question.
- On 19 November a delegation of Chinese officials from the Civil
Aviation Administration of China called on the DCA Hong Kong and put forward proposals that the part of the former Ho Chi Minh FIR currently operated by Hong Kong should now be formally included within the Hong Kong FIR and that control of air traffic over the South China Sea should become a joint responsibility of the Hong Kong and Canton aeronautical authorities. These proposals were obviously intended to counter the Vietnamese proposals and are no doubt to be read in the context of the dispute over territory beneath the airspace concerned. The Hong Kong DCA replied that even now there were technical difficulties for Hong Kong in administering parts of the former Ho Chi Minh FIR so that any permanent extension of the Hong Kong FIR would be very difficult, and that there could in any case only be one control of air traffic in any given air nace for safety reasons.