in fact, involve postponement for quite a long
time. I therefore pointed out to Kitson that
our understanding was, as indeed we made clear
to Sir Alexander Grantham before he left, that
the decision was to defer the question for the
time being without any particular indication
as to when the matter might be brought up again.
The Foreign Office have agreed that this does
in fact represent the position.
There is a third point dealt
with in Kitson's letter, namely the question of
consultation with the Portuguese Government
about Hong Kong and Macao. The views expressed
in the third paragraph of Kitson's letter are
those of the Foreign Office, and if you have
any views on the question we should certainly
be glad to have them. The Foreign Office have
told us that the last thing they want to do
is to get too closely involved with the
Portuguese over Macao. As you probably know,
the operative instrument governing Macao's
status is the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of 1888
which confirmed "The perpetual occupation and
government of Macao and its dependencies by
Portugal". Macao was never formally ceded to
Portugal as Hong Kong was to Great Britain, and
I gather there may accordingly be some substance
Mu Chinese
in any claim by the chinese that Macao remains
under Chinese sovereignty. This being so
it seems clear that it would be against our
interests to allow our unassailable title to
Hong Kong to become linked or associated with
the more vulnerable Portuguese title to Macao.
But I should like to have any views you may
care to put forward.
Yours sincerely,