(136)
OUTWARD TELEGRAM
Cypher/OTP
Confidential
F 2345/154/10
FROM FOREIGN OFFICE TO NANKING
No. 139
14th February,1948
DIPLOMATIC
Vol
D. 4.30 p.m. 14th February, 1948
Repeated to Hong Kong
IMMEDIATE
CONFIDENTIAL
Addressed to Nanking telegram No. 139 of February 14th 1948 repeated for information to Hong Kong.
Your telegram No. 159: Kowloon.
You will by now have seen Hong Kong telegram No. 173 to Secretary of State for Colonies. I am in substantial agreement with the views expressed therein by Governor of Hong Kong.
2. I shall accordingly be grateful if you will once again press the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs to accept my original proposal in regard to care and maintenance of the Garden. I think there is still a chance that he may prove amenable in the light of the undertaking on our part, which you may now give, regarding the two arrested men; namely, that if agreement is secured, the Governor of Hong Kong will, as an act of grace, remit the balance of their sentence on the date of publication of a joint statement on our agreement.
3. Should you find it impossible to make progress on these lines, you may propose to the Minister for Foreign Affairs that responsibility for care and maintenance of the Garden should be entrusted to a joint committee of custodians, consisting of an equal number of nominees appointed by each of the two governments, and jointly responsible for its control, with the maintenance of law and order and sanitation being carried out by the Hong Kong authorities in consultation with the committee. I consider that under this proposal the cost of laying out and maintaining the Garden should be borne jointly by the two governments.
4. If you reach agreement on the above lines it is, of course, essential that the remaining squatters should move their huts to the alternative site indicated by the Government of Hong Kong without further trouble.
You
I should leave the Minister for Foreign Affairs in no doubt
that I rely on the Chinese Government to accept the necessity for this and to take such steps as may be necessary to prevent this measure from being made the subject of agitation in China.
5. Draft of a joint press release will be telegraphed to you and Governor of Hong Kong for comments shortly.
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