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bilateral arrangements between the main importing and
exporting countries. He did not think that it would be, practicable to change the text of the Arrangement in any way because, once the possibility of tinkering with it was agreed, everyone would want to suggest their own amendments; the difficulties of reaching agreement would be almost
insuperable and in any case the whole process would be extremely time-consuming.
exporting countries were to obtain improvements in agreements made under the Arrangement through bilateral discussions, as was the case last time, they might then be willing te agree to some further extension of the Arrangement.
He therefore considered that, if
4. I pointed out të Salib that the circumstances this time were different from what they were in 1966/67. On that
eccasion, for instance, the Americans had concluded quite a
number of bilateral agreements before the question of the future of the Arrangement was taken up under Article 8(d). This was net the case now. To take only one example, the current bilateral agreement between Hong Kong and the U.S. was valid until the end of the present textile year, e.g. 30.9.70, and the Americans had bilateral arrangements with some other countries which would not expire until an even later date. Any negotiations about the renewal of the U.S./ H.K. bilateral would involve considerable preparations and, in view of the pressure of other commitments, I could not
envisage that any negotiations to this end could start much before the Spring of next year. Furthermore, there was the
complication of the American stand on non-cotton textiles.
This could, conceivably, affect their attitude towards the
cotton bilateral.
5. An additional point was that the position vis-à-vis the EEC was not yet clear. At the moment Hong Kong had bilateral
arrangements under Article 4 with Germany and the Benelux countries, but both these arrangements expired at the end
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