Foreign and Commonwealth Office
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UNCLASSIFIED
Sir David Wilson, KCMG
Governor and Commander-in-Chief
Victoria
HONG KONG
175/2
нис 175 п
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
-7 DEC 1987
Your reference
Our reference MRS 022/613/22
Date
2 December 1987
DESK OFFICER
INDEX
REGISTRY
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Action Taken
CAST PAPER
Dear Sir Dand,
INTERNATIONAL MARITIME ORGANISATION (IMO): STATUS OF UK AND DEPENDENT TERRITORIES
1.
As you may know, UK has been a member of Category 'A' of the Council of IMO since that body's inception as IMCO in 1958. As the enclosed DTP paper explains this category is limited to leading maritime nations, as determined by the country's registered shipping tonnage. At IMO UK has been responsible for the interests of shipping on both the "mainland" UK register, and for vessels registered in the dependent territories (except Hong Kong see 4 below) and Crown dependencies.
2.
The ascendancy of several dependent territory registers in terms of both tonnage and sophistication (eg the extension to them of various IMO Conventions) has become an issue of interest to IMO. This, together with the simultaneous decline in UK-registered tonnage, had led DTP to review the question of the tonnage attributed to UK for IMO purposes (which include both eligibility for Category 'A' of the Council and the level of subscription payable). DTp's review and the options identified are described in the attached Paper, which gives additional background. DTP Ministers have decided that it would better reflect our responsibilities for the dependent territories and the Crown dependencies for the tonnage of the dependent territories and Crown dependencies to be included henceforth in the tonnage attributable to UK in IMO. Such a change would also be conducive to our objective of remaining in Category 'A' of the IMO Council. I attach a copy of a recent Note informing IMO of this.
Nor
3. I should stress that this change will not involve any extra financial obligations for your territory, since DTp will be meeting the resultant extra membership dues payable to IMO. it will incur your shipping administration in any extra duties. DTp will, of course, involve dependent territory shipping administrations in its deliberations on IMO matters as far as
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