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Colony and I have sent Hong Kong a telegram asking them to provide this sort of information in the best monetary terms they can manage. Because I can well believe that John Cowperthwaite will
find this request very irritating and may well argue that it is impossible to quantify potential
benefits of this sort, I followed up my official telegram with another, personal to him, asking him to do his best with the figures even if they were only "guesstimates". I am afraid that we
just have to play along with the Treasury over this. and As a matter of fact, although I believe
myself that any figures we produce will have
little real value, I also think that it is a somewhat encouraging sign that we have been asked to provide them. I am not yet going to suggest
that your next conversation with Cowperthwaite
about Kai Tak should be less pessimistic than
your last, but I think there is some hope, that if
we can make a good case for the advantages to the Colony (in the way of tourism, trade, etc.) we
might just manage to get some money, I understand from John Moreton that he was told that Hong Kong were not too worried if they can get an answer within the next four or five months. Long before
that I expect the argument to reach Ministerial level when political factors can be expected to
carry quite a lot of weight.
5.
You may not have heard that after a good deal of haggling on the Board of Directors, with
a Pakistani Director raising a lot of contentious objections, Hong Kong's membership of the Asian
Development Bank has finally been recommended for
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