Mr Ricketts
HKD
HKCD 196/1
་
992
ZB
Reded
pe
втс
FROM: S I SOUTAR, ISD (0) DATE: 7 MAY 1992
6
REQUEST FROM BRITISH TRADE COMMISSIN, HONG KONG, FOR CRYPTEK
1. Thank you for your minute of 22 April giving me a flavour of the likely development of the role of BTC Hong Kong over the next few years.
2.
In the light of your comments, I suspect that providing Cryptek for the BTC is probably a simplistic response to the needs of the Commission and is likely only to provide a stop gap solution to a wider problem. From your minute it appears to us that what will be needed ultimately is a separate communications link between BTC and our message handling system if further embarrassments of the type you mention are to be avoided. But to provide two separate links to one location, with the extra staffing that implies, would be difficult to cost justify unless we could divert resource from the existing Communication Centre in Hong Kong; I assume that this is unlikely in the build up to the 1997 handover. However it may be that as BTC staffing builds up this course of action will become essential. In the meantime we could reinforce our instruction to communications staff that all telegrams for the BTC should be passed directly to that office only and not to any other Hong Kong office. An extra safeguard would be for originators to address particularly sensitive telegrams Personal for Senior Trade Commissioner.
3. Cryptek will certainly meet the immediate requirement but unless it is used strictly for point to point communication between the BTC and your Department it has the major drawback that you in the Department would have to take responsibility for any wider distribution which may be necessary. It cannot be used as a communications channel to provide the kind of automatic distribution available using the telegram service. If you are content to proceed on this basis, we will put procurement in hand. Supply may take up to six months. But I would in any case be grateful for your views on the wider issues raised above and on my interim proposals.
SP Bandlay
pfs
S I Soutar
ISD (0) 270 2771