TNAG-0147-FCO40-183-Exports-of-textiles-to-United-States-of-America-1969 — Page 133

Dem Eria,

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CONFIDENTIAL

M Hale yoy

M Miene?

123/10

(a copy the go to Cartes)

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23/10 تیم

Bota of Trade,

1 Victoria Street, London 3.W.1.

22nd October, 1969

воу

257

257

Textiles

We have been giving further careful thought to the idea of a personal message to President Nixon put forward in your telegrams 2714 and 2715, in the light of the upshot of the recent meetings in Geneva of the Cotton Textiles Committee, and of subsequent exchanges, usefully analysed in Melville's letter to Goldsmith (copied to Ridley) of 17th October.

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2. We have been influenced in the first place by what we were told by the U.3. Delegation at Geneva to the effect 'that the only result of handing over the aide-memoire which was delivered to the President's Aides at Mildenhall was to cause considerable annoyance. (Your telegram 2714 pointed out that this never reached the President himself. It is perhaps inevitable that a message designed precisely to go over the heads of officials should cause annoyance to those officials, particularly if it fails to go over their heads after all. Nevertheless, we would not wish to put their backs up unnecessarily.)

3. On the substance of the matter, we have to consider what the effective content of a message at this time would be. The object of the message would be, as we see it, to deflect the President from some course on which he would otherwise embark. The course on which the Americans recently set themselves was towards comprehensive bilateral restraint agreements. The country whose attitude to this will be decisive is Japan. One cannot be sure, but our best guess is that in spite of some signs of wobbling, which the Americans may be trying to exaggerate, the Japanese intention is still to stand firm. If the Japanese weaken, it will be for political reasons extraneous to the textile question and nothing that we can say is likely to make any impression on them,

/though

E.A. Midgley, Esq., CMG, MBE,

Minister (Commercial),

British Embassy,

Washington,

U.S.A.

CONTIDENTIAL

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