TOP SECRET
Page
285
INWARD TELEGRAM
Page 1016233
“INTEL & SECURITY 28 APR 1958 SECTION
TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES
FROM HONG KONG (Sir R. Black)
Simplex D. 25th April 1958
R. 25th
11
C
09.30 hrs.
y
IMMEDIATE
TOP SECRET No. 350
(حمد)
Following Personal for Melville.
Your telegram No. 335.
I am sorry that my new approach to this problem, which I framed carefully to facilitate an early and favourable response to the genuine and pressing requirements of security in Hong Kong, appears to be in danger of failing to disentangle the urgent operational needs from the complex and necessarily deliberate consideration of land problems. I answer below as far as possible the questions asked in your telegram under reference, but I also make a further appeal for the provision of the two units in exchange for a temporarily additional contribution to be treated as the urgent matter that it undoubtedly is from our point of view. I am informed that it will require four months from the date of a decision for the first unit to arrive and seven for the second. If either is to be here by September - I need hardly argue the importance of this a very early decision is required.
20
Condition (c) was inserted as a safeguard. It will be recalled that in the original proposals the provision of the extra units, an additional contribution and the land proposals were linked. My modified proposal was intended to make it possible to deal with the first two urgently without necessarily abandoning completely the more comprehensive proposal. I therefore inserted the condition to ensure that having made a concession by agreeing to a larger payment this Government received due credit for such payment in the final negotiations. If I am asked how the condition would be applied I suggest that it need not apply at all if the subsequent negotiations with the W. D. are based on the following:
(a) if the War Department have a need to use W. D. lot 5
but agree to refrain from using it and thereby to assist Government's development programme, Government would reprovision it to an agreed scale (based on user and not of course on the value of the land) elsewhere free of all charge and without any deduction, but no additional compensation would be paid,
(b) if
(216)-