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HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A OAA
With this background, I hope I may take up your kind offer to give support through our Ambassadors as may be appropriate. With the agreed support of the Twelve Plus, it should now be possible to concentrate on Latin America, Asia and Africa and the two major powers of the USSR and China where indications at a personal level are extremely positive. During the coming months, I am seeking opportunities to put across my message as a presidential candidate on two fronts. First, making the observer status at the United Nations one of my main objectives in raising the profile and standing of the IPU and second, outlining detailed proposals for increasing the organisation's effectiveness particularly through an extension of the Executive Committee's activities between conference to present a wider parliamentary viewpoint on current political affairs. In this process, I hope to attend the meeting of the Union of African Parliaments at the beginning of June; I have been selected as a delegate for the CPA Conference in New Delhi in September and I shall arrange widespread consultations in Latin America prior to the start of the 86th Conference in Chile in October. In all these activities, I hope I can seek support from our Embassies and I would like to suggest that this matter might perhaps most conveniently be arranged
if you agree through Michael Bates who continues to provide first class support for the Foreign Office parliamentary liaison activities and who is fully informed on the IPU presidential campaign.
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I must apologise for writing at some length but I hope that this spread of information about IPU affairs may be helpful in looking at some of our parallel interests in the coming months.
I am taking the opportunity of sending copies of this letter to Mr. Speaker and to Dr. Michael Clark.