in FED 82/454/01
Page 63
Office of the Commissioner-General for the United Kingdom
Copy of enclosure to Foreign offrie
F. 1072/76 of 5.3.59.
lettas
(H. 1191/14/59G)
in South-East Asia,
Phoenix Park,
SINGAPORE, 10.
44.
TOP SECRET & GUARD
February 16, 1959
In de la Mare's letter 10822/1/59/58G of December 18 to you there was a reference in paragraph 3 to the problem of staff talks with the Americans about Hong Kong. This was picked up again in Foreign Office telegram to us No. 82 of January 14.
2.
I discussed this question (in so far as it relates to Hong Kong for, of course, our Services have regular contacts with their American opposite numbers over a much wider field) with you when you were in Singapore for the Eden Hall Conference, and confirmed that the only joint planning talks with the Americans which could possibly be considered to be under way at the moment were the four-power talks. (For the purposes of this letter I am ignoring the bilateral single-Service links which continue to function and which, on the Air Force side at least, are proving valuable.) These four-power talks are at present delicately suspended and at no stage did they cover Hong Kong, no mention of which was made when the Planners went to Pearl Harbour for the first four-power meeting in early October. We do, however, have the impression that the Australians and New Zealanders, although agreeing that the problem is essentially a bilateral one for discussion between ourselves and the Americans, would nevertheless be interested to know how things were going.
3.
There are therefore no defence talks on Hong Kong at present in progress with the Americans; and, with the exception of the Stump-Festing talks in May, 1958, which paved the way for the first round of four-power talks, there have been none since the preliminary talks in 1956. Certain matters raised in 1956 (e.g. common target lists) are still subject to periodic revision, and amendments are circulated to the Americans, but we do not consider this as continuing consultation on Hong Kong's defence.
4.
I mentioned to you that, at the moment, we are not sure in our own minds when we will be ready to speak with the Americans again. Late last October the Commander-in-Chief, Far East Land Forces, held his annual exercise in Hong Kong, the subject chosen for study being the defence of Hong Kong in 1963. A party of Americans observers accepted an invitation to attend this exercise. Although we do not want to make too much of the results of exercise "White Dragon", as it was called (particularly since some of its assumptions are by no means proved and were included only to make the story more suited to a three-day military exercise), it was nevertheless apparent that the possibility of defending Hong Kong not merely in 1963 but also at any other time was a matter requiring further intensive military study.
5.
It was accordingly decided that the Planners should begin work on a paper which, it was recognised, would take some time to complete. (The Planners were thinking in terms of six months to a year.) It seemed highly probable that their answer would be that, so long as we had a nuclear capability and the Chinese did phot and provided that very considerable expenditure were
Base be 06172 authorised now, then in certain circumstances the
P.G.F. Dalton, Esq.,C.M.G.,
Foreign Office. S.W. 1.
TOP SECRET & GUARD
Hong Kong