FAXED 21/4/92
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
4
Office of the
British Senior Representative
Sino-British Joint Liaison Group
R A Burns Esq CMG
Assistant Under Secretary of State
Room WH323
FCO
Dean Andays,
ASAS: THE WAY FORWARD
1.
MrThichilt: Hris
21 April 1992
stolnice pl. Shule ? nove with 7. Cing?
This sention is not-tolerable
TC+5:30/10
I have sent you a telegram today in reply to your telno 28 about the mishap with your telegram on ASAS. My reply contains as much as I thought I could put in a telegram to be transmitted by the very communicators who made the mistake. But you should know that there have been a whole series of errors in that office. Frankly, we do not think that the level of staffing of it and the general level of nous available is such that this is ever likely to improve. To give you an illustration, when we first took up with the them the mishandling of your original telegram, their response, given with an air of complete justification, was that they had given the incoming telegram the same distribution as the outgoing telegram to which it referred. When we pointed out that this was not appropriate, since the address line included only us, and no one else, they replied that this was the way things were done in the FCO. We had to explain to them in words of one syllable that Hong Kong is not the FCO, and that they are not operating for a unified office like the FCO, but for three separate entities. We think they have understood this point, but I am sorry to say that I have no confidence that they will always get it right in future. Quite frankly, I don't think they always bother to read the preamble fully. This is why I strongly suggest you use a personal prefix in anything which is sensitive: this they do (usually) pick up. For even better security, use the fax: even then it is necessary to make sure that the communicators in London send it to our fax number, and not via the Government House Communications Office fax machine. There has been one case where an incoming fax addressed to me and sent to the GH number was inadvertently copied to various members of the Hong Kong Government. Fortunately it was not particularly sensitive.
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
HKD 196/
12B
t