retention of long bathy)
most appropriate way of putting the question before Ministers would be the submission of a paper by the Far Eastern (Official) Committee to its Ministerial counterpart. A joint paper was accordingly prepared (No.73) and submitted to the Official Committee for consideration. That Committee thought that the paper should go further in the direction of a definite conclusion in favour of the retention of Hong Kong (a view with which, of course,
and invited the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office to revise the paper in this and certain other respects. (See minutes of the meeting at No.74 on this file.) I prepared a revised draft (No.79) and sent it to the Foreign Office, for their comments, on the 14th January. In the covering letter I said that the Secretary of State had asked that consideration of this matter by the Far Eastern (Official) Committee should be expedited, and expressed the hope that it would be possible for the revised paper to be considered by the Committee before the end of January. Despite a telephonic reminder, I have not had a reply from Mr. Kitson, but Mr. Bevin himself wrote to the Secretary of State on the 28th January (No.82) suggesting that consideration of the Hong Kong problem should be deferred, at any rate until he had seen General Marshall and had been able to find out what his (General Marshall's) general attitude towards China was. Following the receipt of this letter and the Secretary of State's note on it (No.83), I prepared a draft reply to Mr. Bevin, which has now gone off (No.84), urging that the Official Committee should proceed with the consideration of this matter, and that the revised paper should be submitted as quickly as possible. For background information regarding Mr. Bevin's conclusion that consideration of the Hong Kong problem should be deferred, please see my minute at No.78 recording a discussion with Mr. Kitson of the Foreign Office.
Our next move is clearly to press the Foreign Office, on the official level, to agree our revised draft paper and to get it before the Official Committee as quickly as possible. Before we can do this, however, we must decide whether or not we are to insert in the revised paper (at 79) a new paragraph dealing with the airport, on the lines of my draft at (85). As you will see from the minutes, (following the entry at No.81 on this file) Mr. Bigg agrees with the new paragraph but, as I understand his minute, Mr. J.B. Williams does not. I think that Mr. Williams, in his minute, confuses two separate issues, namely (a) a Ministerial public statement of our intention to retain Hong Kong, and (b) a Ministerial decision, which would not of course, be made public, that continued control over the installations in the New Territories should be regarded as an essential condition of our agreement to any premature termination of the lease of the New Territories.
It has already been decided that we should press for the Ministerial statement referred to in (a), see the minutes directly following the entry of No.78 and the Secretary of State's letter to Mr. Bevin at No. 84. As to the second question, I quite see the advantage of not making the construction of the airport conditional on a Ministerial decision regarding the continued control.
of