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as the mémoire introductif of the Ministry of Justice of 17 December (copy attached) clearly implies. I therefore see nothing to be gained in withdrawing our appeal (indeed when the subject of withdrawal came up briefly with Thébault, he described it as a meaningless gesture "since you are going to lose").
5. The next step is for Mme Masse-Dessen to put forward her more detailed mémoire, which must have happened by 12 March, or our case falls. She asked me to confirm that we wanted her to prepare this; I said that it was already agreed with Hong Kong that we would go through the two legal hoops to bring the matter before the Conseil d'Etat. She should therefore prepare a draft mémoire, ensuring that there was at least a fortnight for this to be considered by Hong Kong.
6.
Our wider policy on Saniman should, I recommend, continue to be that we inexorably but slowly move through the proper procedures for an appeal before the Conseil. We should at no point indicate that we are not doing this in full seriousness, There is little point in making political approaches between now and the French legislative elections, which finish on 28 March. My conversation with Thébault yesterday will have sufficed to make clear to the cabinet of the Minister of Justice that Saniman remains an extremely sensitive case for Britain and Hong Kong and that we are determined to get him extradited if we possibly can. As you know, John Coles also mentioned the case to Levitte (FCO telno 10 to Paris).
However, we must prepare ourselves for a major onslaught on the new government, as soon as it is appointed. The French government gives little weight to the Hong Kong authorities (which it tends to view through the lens of its own colonial administration ì.e. that everything that matters happens in Paris). If an approach is to have an impact here, it will have to come from British Ministers and at ministerial, not official, level. If he can be persuaded to help, the Attorney-General should write to the new Minister of Justice as soon as he is appointed setting out the essentials of the case, but above all its political sensitivity, and describe this as something as important to London as to Hong Kong (or something along those lines). We would deliver this letter both to the cabinet of the Foreign Minister and either personally to the new Minister of Justice or to his Directeur du Cabinet.
8. Could you also prepare a separate piece of paper about the legal system in Hong Kong and about the treatment of those who are accused along with saniman. Some voices in France, audible to the Ministry of Justice, are apparently saying that intolerable pressures are being put on the co-accused, that there is no chance of a fair trial, and that the Osman case has lent greater weight to these arguments. When Thébault raised these points with me yesterday, I simply said that the
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