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UNCTAD Preferences: the UK, offer veure after
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The minutes of the meeting this morning which dis- cussed PCO (69) 18 will no doubt appear next week so I will confine myself to recording the main points,
2. There was a good deal of questioning, led by our- selves, as to whether the objections to a duty quota system vere in fact insuperable. After a long discus- sion, during which Mr. Combs put forward the arguments for aligning ourselves closer to the E.B.C.. the Chairman summed up the general feeling of the meeting by saying that e should rot rule out a modification of our original ffer in the direction of a dut, quota system, depending on the elucidation in Paris of the meaning f' other coun ́ries' offers.
3. questions were also asked as to how far it might be possible to get the other donors to improve their offers. Mr. Goldsmith revealed the information - pre- viously unnown to me at leas t - that there is a meet- ing this week in Paris to discuss the U.. and Japanese offers, with prior agreemont amongst certain countries that the ... would be pressed bot to inprove its offer and to make it a good deal clearer.
4. ar. Goldsmith informed the meeting that calcula- tions had been maue by a Working Party of the size of U.K. quotas on groups on commodities if we adopted the 3.2.C. Bystem. Though Mr. Goldsmith implied that the study had been passed to other departments I have not secn it myself. Perhaps Mr. Hurden could obtain copies from the Board of Trade.
5. on agriculture, Mr. Dixon said that the offer annexed to the PCO paper tried to strike the right balance between meeting Commonwealth interests and having an offer of derisory proportions. He himself proposed early consultations with the developed Common- wealth countries with whom we have contractual arrang- ments; and at the later stage of the meeting I put the point - which I think was accepted - that consultations should also be held with the 3outh Africans, (Perhaps
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I could have advice on what we need to do, if anything, about the Irish). There is no bar on ourselves or other departments making further comments in writing on the existing MAFF list.
6. As regards consultations with developing Common- wealth countries, Mr. Goldsmith. rightly pointed out that what interested them was a comparison between the U.K. offer and other countries' offers. we could, therefore, have no meaningful consultations with them at the present time.
7.
Huch of the remainder of the discussion related to the self-election principle and Hong Kong. All present agreed that this was an intractable problem and that we could not force other donor countries to adopt the self-election principle. It was agreed that
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