13 September 1993
BY FAX
42
Да
186/1
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
R
London SW1A 2AH
93
Telephone: 071-270-3287
Mr Anthony W L Ng
Immigration Department' HONG KONG
Dear Anthony,
KAL-007: REVIVAL OF COMPENSATION CLAIM
After
1. You will have seen the teleletter of 31 August from our Embassy in Moscow and Ms Lee's letter of 10 September. holding a co-ordination meeting in the FCO, Eastern Department are now drafting a submission to Ministers recommending that our compensation claim be revived. Before this is submitted we would like to have your comments and views.
2. Our compensation claim was initially made to the Soviet Embassy in London in September 1983. The Soviets refused to accept our Diplomatic Note on this and subsequent occasions. Nevertheless, detailed work continued on the claim (done mostly by Hong Kong Government) and in July 1985 we informed the Soviets that the exact amount of compensation we were demanding was two million pounds.
3.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation report on the disaster was finally completed in June of this year. Although this report did not specifically lay the blame on any one party, and despite the fact that Russia has refused to accept any liability arising from the actions of the Soviet Airforce in 1983, the Americans, Koreans, Japanese and Australians have all recently said that their compensation claims are still valid, and the Canadians are likely to follow suit. Our instinct is to do likewise: we would be grateful for your views. We understand that the next-of-kin are strongly in favour of renewing the claim (your letter of 19 February), and if this is still the case, there is probably no need to bother them on this question now. As we are hoping to submit to Ministers soon we would be grateful to know your views by the end of the week.
4.
If it is decided to go ahead, we will have to submit separately on whether to update the amount of compensation which we are demanding. As the work on the initial compensation claim was done in Hong Kong and presumably followed standard Hong Kong legal practice, we would be grateful for your comments in due course on whether interest