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Reference...
44
Mr Morris
Discussed with M. Momuus,
Me to draft to Mr Leung.
FUTURE CONSULATE GENERAL:
HUD 406/13
RECEIVE
- 9 SEP 1993
DF: OFFICE
INDEX
معظم السلام
HY
..n Taxen
BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
1.
You will recall that I was preparing instructions for Mr Cornish asking him to approach the Building and Lands Department to tell them about our plans for inclusion of the British Chamber of Commerce within the future Consulate General. We had hoped, by means of a licensing arrangement, to avoid having to apply formally for the written permission of the Director of Building and Lands (under Special Condition 13 of the Private Treaty Grant). I duly refined the draft letter (which was shown to Mr Cornish when he visited the Department recently). In preparing for submission to clear this line with Mr Goodlad, I took one last look at the Private Treaty Grant. I was concerned that Special Condition 7 might prove to be an obstacle (this was touched on in earlier correspondence but not in any detail). As you will see from the attached minuting (my minute of 3 September, Mr Savage's of 6 September and Miss Brooks' of 8 September) Special Condition 7 does indeed cause problems.
2. Miss Brooks' advice is that the only chance of getting round this problem is to ask the Director, under Special Condition 13, for approval to give a licence to the Chamber of Commerce. Miss Brooks advises further that if such approval were obtained, it would be necessary to draw the attention of the Hong Kong Government to Special Condition 7 and obtain in writing from them a waiver - or at least an acknowledgment that there would be no breach of Special Condition 7 (there is some contradiction between the two Special Conditions).
3. I believe we need to rethink our approach to the Hong Kong Government. I consider we need to start at the top and to get the agreement of the Governor in principle for the move we want to make before taking it up with the Director of the Building and Lands Department. As you know, we went to Michael Sze when we had problems earlier with negotiating the PTG. But more recently, Mr Ricketts has contemplated using Martin Dinham as a sounding board. Subject to your views, any submission on this subject might be cast in the form of a request for approval for a letter from Mr Ricketts/Hum to Mr Dinham/Leung. Grateful for an opportunity to discuss with you.
4.
We need to decide on the way forward quite quickly.
min.morris.NAT
JEB
CODE 18-77
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