(a) on Spain and Portugal, that for the purposes of the Accession Treaty the term "the Kingdom of Spain" included Ceuta, Melilla and the Canaries, and the term "the Portuguese Republic" included the Azores and Madeira. These territories are legally a part of the Kingdom and Republic respectively. Gibraltar and Macao are not. With this good and recent precedent to hand, it was agreed you should suggest the same solution in the present case.
(b) it is likely that at least the commercially sophisticated UK dependencies, principally Hong Kong, Bermuda and Cayman, would be interested in preserving the option of extension of the Convention. FCO will consult them. The drawback, which we will point out, is that complicated internal legislation would be necessary to give effect to the judgements of other parties in those territories.
(c) the option for a State party to object to an individual extension currently inserted in square brackets in Article 64 (3) of the draft was undesirable because of the complications it would introduce. In principle a Convention such as this should apply without exceptions as between all territories covered by ratifications or extensions. You should therefore maintain the position that the power of objection was unacceptable.
(d) in so far as the objections to extension rest on a fear of judicial standards slipping on independence, Mr Canty explained that there are no new independence negotiations in prospect or likely before the turn of the century. So far as Hong Kong is concerned, the agreement with China preserves the judicial system after the lease runs out.
(e) the Portuguese should be asked to think again on Macao. As a "territory under Portugese administration" whose future status is currently under negotiation with China, it would be inappropriate to extend this Convention there.
(f) it was pointed out that the French Polynesian territories were already covered under the 1968 Convention.
6. To summarise, at least for the present we would be grateful if you would continue to argue for a general right of extension to dependent territories both in Europe and outside it, and against a right of objection. Ian Mathers suggested a possible compromise variant of requiring unanimous objection by the States party other than the extending State. This is worth considering as a fall-back.