CONFIURTIAL
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the preference scheme of any entry which reaches the agreed import ceiling of any particular product. 1 feel that it is quite in order to pursue these negotiations in the manner advocated in para. 2 of Mr. Jones letter to Kr. Goldsmith of 2 October and the tentative proposals put forward so far appear to be generally in line with the song Kong Government's views on the problem (para. 2(b) of the enclosure to the Governor's Savingram of 4 January).
vi) You will have seen from pare. 1(vi) of my minute of 22 September to Mr. Carter that I agree with your conclusions concerning the exclusion by the U.K. of any particular country from the scheme. But we should not ignore the possibility of excluding some items from our industrial lists which are of particular interest to long Zong. Perhaps we could ask the Board of Trade to look into the question with a view to establishing whether this could be done ***hout diluting our offer too seriously. lt may well be, of course, that the reductions which we may hava to make in the industrial sector of the tariff will g long way to help liong Kong's position, i.e. the Americans have tabled a vast number of items on which they indicate that they wil1 be applying specini treatment and it may be that we will have to follow suit.
2. As to what action we should now take I am inclined to agree that we will probably have to force the issue of Hong Kong's status into the open in OKCD before the matter is put to the developing countries in UNCTAD. We have just received a copy of a letter from úr. Kommis to Ar. Hannay dated 8 October, of which the leat paragraph indicates that this suggestion has now been put forward by Mr. Jones. I agree that it would be useful to have a meeting na osen as possible with Mr. Goldsmith to disquse what the U.K. line should be . Forhaps Kr. Giffard of FESD would also like to participate in view of the parallel problem of humania. The next round of OECD discussions starts on 13 October.
(H. G. Britten) 2 Jctober, 1969
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