SECRET&
concerned, I suspect that other member countries would be prepared to go along with this. It would probably work quite well for purely technical conferences; however, I cannot see that for conferences with a significant political content, the Chinese would be willing to give the UK carte blanche. Perhaps FED can comment on this point.
6. There is also the current question of Hong Kong's attendance at the APPU Executive Council meeting. New Zealand has pointed out that under the APPU Constitution (of which we do not have a copy) the dependencies are entitled to request observer status by virtue of their separate ensemble membership of the UPU. I would have thought it unlikely that China would be prepared to make an issue of this if Hong Kong is legally entitled to attend this meeting by virtue of its UPU status. If the Chinese wished to score a political point, I would have thought that they would have chosen the more important meeting of the APPU Congress to do so, but this is a further point on which FED is more qualified to comment.
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24 August 1982
Cc:
Mr Cox FED
Mr Watts
Legal Advisers
SECRET
DT Healy..
Energy, Science and
Space Department