*
26
1. Combs
17 Wee 1969
HILI
18/35
Ropa Bensin Alią
I agree that as suggested in paragraph 1 of your minute of the 12 December we should wait and sec what the DM and Treasury put down on paper before we consult the Governor.
Un paragraph ) of your minute, the suggestio in paragraph (a) in Mr. Carter's minute of 5 December is of course subject to the provise in that laute i.c. tc defensible answer being worked out to the two que tions he posed in peregraph 7 of his minute, ip. (1), that we co 1d justify making a conditional offer to dependent territories while at the same time offering to pick up the bili in all independent teritories, and (...) that within the dependent territories we could justify using 2.8. participation in OSAS as o criterion for determining whether or not to pick up the expatriate pension: bill. le
Te posed thos questions and as at present advised do not myself see any satisfactory answer to them.
You also suggest that the principle of paramountcy of the interests of the inhabitants of dependent territories, enshrined in the IN Charter, could not seriously be prayed in sid by Hong Kong in this particular situation. jam not concerned about any intellectual atisfaction which we might give ourselves in ensworing this if it were prayed in aid but on the state of mind in the territory which is the largest holder of sterling (utside the U") in the world which would lead ing Government to pray this principle in aid and which is not likely to be satisfied in the same way as ourselves by any answer we would give. 1am toubtful in any case whether we could sustain your argument in practice. We would have to do so against a background in which, however mich we dressed up
decision to take over these pensions 28 cbange in the applicion of our aid, we should be seen generally as having
cepted, however belately, the original Tanzanian claim that it
right for overseas Governments to devote the funds, set aside for pensions, to the social and economic welfare of their own people
n not (to borrow Sir Arthur Snellin's phrase for aid to
Cheltenham. Moreover I rind it difficult to believe that we could
cep or any significant length of time the quantum of our future
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