24 MAY '89 23:25
FROM COI TECH RADIO
TRANSCRIPT J: SELECT COMMITTEE RE HONG KONG
24 MAY 1989
-8-
PAGE.005 056
MR. TIM RENTON:
I can only tell you what the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office have told me
that they are not
aware, as I say, of any difficulties with Pakistan.
There appears to bave been a small problem with Austria which has really come about through correspondence not
being answered as much as anything else.
clear it up shortly.
They expect to
MR. DENNIS CANAVAN;
The same individual suggested that
we should be
Do
to encourage a greater take-up rate of BHO passports. you have any plans to try and increase the take-up rate?
MR. TIX RENTON;
working
This would really be for the FCO, of course, with the Hong Kong Government but I am not aware of any
plans.
I think that the FCO, from all I hear, has been very diligent in putting forward the fact that the BHO passport
is,
in all the terms that we have talked about,
equivalent
to the BDTC passport and I would suspect that the take-up will, as I say, increase but if there were plans to
advertise it more these would lie between the FCO and the
Hong Kong Administration.
Of course,
everyone has got to make a choice in this
respect before July 1997.
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