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35.
Sir William Harding returned to the question of the empty Canadian chair at the OAS. He thought it would be a very positive step for the Canadians to take their place. He recognised there would be some difficulties for Canada, but it would be worth the price. The Latin American countries had a high regard for Canada, which they recognised as being very different from the United States, and would greatly welcome her participation.
36.
Mr Clark said he was concerned about the ideological nature of the US involvement. He compared the position to that in the Commonwealth. Although the UK was the senior member of the Commonwealth, there was no difficulty about disagreement with her if need be. But he thought the reaction of the Americans, if the Canadians disagreed with them and had to vote or take part in public debate in the OAS, would be very difficult. At present they had a private channel to the Americans which would suffer. Mr Jamieson added that the Latin Americans and the United States wanted Canadian participation for opposite reasons.
Other Matters
37. On Hong Kong, Sir Geoffrey Howe said that there were further details in the arrangements on citizenship and civil aviation about which we would tell the Canadians. We also had a difficult problem over Soviet soldiers from Afghanistan. He hoped we could pursue parallel policies. Our aim would be to spread the load among Western countries. Mr Marchand said Canada was already carrying part of the load. The problem was that the last applicants were on drugs and did not qualify for admission to Canada by the regular criteria. Mr Thomas said that the main problem with Rykov and Khlan was that there was no suitable emigre community in Britain to provide the support which they had needed. Sir Geoffrey Howe hoped that the Canadians would in future be able to give similarly placed people some benefit of the
doubt.
38. On Namibia, the Secretary of State said British and Canadian objectives were presumably the same. We should press ahead in the Contact Group, with or without France. In Cyprus we had a Commonwealth Group. The initiative by the UN Secretary-General was doing better than expected. He thought Canadian involvement important. Mr Clark said they had felt some weariness two to three years ago, but were now playing their role. Sir Geoffrey Howe said that no
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