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Accordingly, I would suggest that the initial aim be to develop good working relations with
with the Chinese Representative, other Council Representatives and Air Navigation Commissioners and, of course, the President, Secretary General and members of the ICAO Secretariat. Links with the various International Organizations such as IATA, AACI, IFALPA etc should also be fostered. Meetings of Panels and larger international meetings held in Montreal provide excellent opportunities for contacts with delegates from a wide range of countries. This would not only be useful in relation to individual issues of importance to Hong Kong, but would effectively spread the knowledge of the distinct HK aviation presence.
The aviation world is comparatively small and made are often of long-term
surprisingly permanent so contacts
value.
You might wish your Montreal
Representative to participate occasionally in other aviation-related meetings/panels held in this hemisphere in order to save the costs of travel of other officers from Hong Kong.
In this context, he/she would also wish to be on the alert for opportunities to raise Hong Kong's aviation profile internationally in order to establish a suitable track record prior to 1997. This would tie in with possibilities currently under consideration for Hong Kong to host one or two major meetings over the next 2-3 years.
As Alternate to the UK Representative the HK Officer could deputize for him at any meeting of the Council or its subordinate committees and other bodies. To be effective, a Representative has personally to keep his finger on the pulse of the Organization at all levels, but a limited amount of delegation in order to lend greater credibility to the Officer concerned might be of mutual benefit. If the officer were suitably qualified he might, at a later
a later stage, also be made an alternate to the Air Navigation Commissioner, although I would suggest that this would
would not be immediately necessary since he could attend their meetings
meetings anyway as an "alternate" UK Representative. It might also provide a useful entrée for the officer concerned to take on responsibility for dealing with some of the more unspecific enquiries we receive, but this would perforce have to be on a somewhat ad hoc basis.
On the detailed side, you may wish to have regular reports to supplement, or replace, the rather wide-ranging and non-HK specific reports you currently get from Mr Singh and myself. I imagine that regular contacts with the Chinese Representative will result in increasingly close
close co-operation on issues of joint interest. Administrative and social arrangements for HK members of UK delegations could gradually be assumed by the HK Officer.