CONFIDENTIAL
PRIORITY
assurances about sterling safeguards for pensions.
Whether or
not that is true, I have also to warn that, in the current financial climate, I can hold out no certainty of making any porgress on the sterling safeguard issue within the timescale envisaged for announcing compensation arrangements.
If we were
to link the two issues, the result might be further delay before
we could say aything on compensation. I can well imagine that this would cause considerable problems at your end.
Consultation with the Chinese
8. We continue to see much advantage in consulting the Chinese
about our plans at a relatively early stage. We envisage this being done by Galsworthy at an informal meeting with Guo. We are keen, as no doubt you are, to initiate this process as soon as possible, but as you will see from the above, we still have some way to go before our own thinking is clear and firm.
HURD
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LIMITED
HKD
PS/LORD CAITHNESS
MR MCLAREN
MR BURNS
MR FISH, ODA
MR REW, HM TREASURY
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