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2.
IMPORTS OF FERRO-CHROME INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM
The Committee had before them a memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (OPD(67) 52) about imports of ferro-chrome containing
Rhodesian constituents manufactured in South Africa.
THE COMMONWEALTH SECRETARY said that, under existing legislation,
we could not prohibit the import into this country of commodities named in the United Nations Security Council resolution of 16th December 1966 on
limited mandatory sanctions against Rhodesia, if these were processed in a
third country and then imported. Although this practice was almost
universal, the United States prohibited such transactions and they were
under strong commercial pressure to relax their practice and come in line
with our own.
The matter had come to a head because the Union Carbide
(United Kingdom) company had informed the Board of Trade that they wished
to import into this country 7,500 tons of ferro-chrome made in South Africa
from chrome ore and ferro-chrome silicon imported from Rhodesia. Unless
we informed the United States Government that day that we intended to
modify our legislation so as to prohibit such transactions, they would
bring their legislation into line with our own; this fact would be
published and we should then be seen to have been responsible for weakening
the impact of economic sanctions against the illegal regine. We would
then be likely to face strong criticism in the United Nations for this
and pressure there for us to go further than we wished in action against
Portugal and South Africa to tighten those sanctions. We should therefore
make an Order in Council in general terms prohibiting the import of
materials of Rhodesian origin into this country where these had been
processed in a third country and, initially, apply this Order to Rhodesian
ferro-chrome.
Discussion showed a division of view in respect of the proposal.
On the one hand it was pointed out that it would be technically impossible
to distinguish between ferro-chrome manufactured from Rhodesian ore and
other ferro-chrome, that it was against our wider commercial interests to
change our present practice and apply import restrictions on the basis of
the country of origin of the raw materials rather than of the country in
which they had been processed before import, that it might be difficult to
administer the Order without in practice discriminating against South Africa,
and finally that the practical effect of such action against the illegal
regime would be negligible. On the other hand, the overthrow of the
illegal regine was an important feature of Government policy and we could not afford to be less rigorous than other countries applying sanctions,
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