CO129-588-24 China- British extra-territorial rights- negotiations with China 23-11-1942 - 1-1-1943 — Page 105

B.4293/42.

Immediato. By Hand.

Dear Ashley Clarke,

193

the

Burma Offico,

Whitehall,

21st.

-5.1.

105

124 December,1942.

have seen Chungking telegram No.1699 of th December about extraterritoriality. In our view the Chinose suggestion that the Irrawaddy, is an international river should be strongly esisted. The northern boundary of Burma is of course undemarcated, but according to our ideas of where the boundary should lic it would be out of the question to admit any suggestion that the Irrawaddy flows through anything but Burmese territory, though it is truc that some streams which food it rise outside Burma. We think it is important to refute this false argument of the Chinese for two reasons, firstly because as we have previously stated, we think it only right that the Chinese should give up their rights on the Irrawaddy if we are surrendering similar rights in respect of inland navigation in China, and, in the second place, because the Chinese suggestion that the Irrawaddy is an international river is probably based on the assumption that the undemarcated northern boundary of Burma lies much further to the south and wost than we maintain, and to admit the Chinese thesis might be a disadvantage later on when the question of demarcating the boundary comes to be considered.

I am sending copics of this to the usual people.

(Sgd.) W. JOHNSTON.

H. Ashley Clarke, Esq.;

Foreign Office, S. W. 1.