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FLASH HONG KONG TO COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (D.T.D.)
Telno. 1629 2 November, 1967.
SECRET
Addressed to Commonwealth Office telegram No. 1629
of 2 November.
Repeated for information to POLAD Singapore, Washington and Peking.
147)
For Galsworthy.
Your telegram No. 2235: Border.
We have had no reply to our message from Chinese yet and if we get one I doubt if it will get us much further. I do not believe that to send lower level negotiators would achieve any useful result.
2. On the general question whether we should now give way on venue, I think the important factor is that our negotiators believe the Chinese are genuinely anxious for some settlement and it would seem a pity to drive one point too far. Chinese instructions on this point may well be too rigid to enable them to budge at all.
3
If therefore, as expected, we get no satisfactory reply by say 9 a.m. tomorrow, in response to our message, I suggest we might say:-
"We are sorry you have been unable to explain your refusal of our perfectly reasonable request for meetings on alternate sides of the border, but we believe we understand your difficulty and we acknowledge that your agreement to hold talks so close to the border at Lo Wu instead of at Man Kam To is to some extent a concession to our own difficulties.
We are ready therepfe to meet you once again today at the same place, at the same time"- or words to this effect. I believe this is as far as we should push our objections, and that to continue to be intransigent may be to lose a real chance for reaching some accord for an insufficient end (assuming, as we think, that they are genuinely endeavouring to be reasonable according to their thoughts). There is, I think, some difference in the situation since the views in paragraph 3 of my telegram 1582 were expressed.
3.[sic] I take your point at the end of your paragraph 2, and we will endeavour to pursue this line.
4。 Grateful for your further views by early tomorrow here if possible. RECEIVED IN ARCHIVES No. 63 -3-10V1967
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