HIKE/12
Mr. Britten
CONFIDENTIAL
Generalised preferences:
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Hong Kong
I have read the report from the Counsellor (Hong Kong affairs) in Geneva of which a copy was attached to your
minute of 24 September to Mr. Brind. I did not see it until after our talks with Mr. Hijzen yesterday.
2. The Board of Trade will be circulating a record of those talks. So far as this particular question was concerned,
Mr. Hijzen made it clear that it was not within his own
sphere of responsibility. He was,
however, well aware of his
colleagues' thinking, and had a brief for yesterday's talks.
Most of the conversation on this subject consisted of our
reiterating our usual arguments. Mr. Hijzen was at pains
to dissipate any illusion we might possess that the EEC were
likely to agree to extend the benefits of the scheme to
Hong Kong, though he assured us that all our arguments would
be taken carefully into account.
3. I think that Mr. Jones may well be right in saying that the best hope (such as it is) may lie in a personal intervention
by the Chancellor of the Luchy of Lancaster. But what really
worries me in this context is that I do not believe that the
Community really accept one of our basic arguments, namely
that if we join the Community Hong Kong will become a Community problem (so that it is in their interest to find
a way to reduce the urgency of the problem by getting the
benefits of the generalised preferences scheme extended to Hong Kong by the United States). I suspect that they really
see the Hong Kong problem in the negotiations as being
exclusively a British problem. If we were prepared to say
that even if everything else came out satisfactorily in the
negotiations we would not join unless they did something satisfactory for Hong Kong, this might have some impact
if they believed us. But, short of that, I fear that their
attitude will simply be that it is up to the British to
/decide
CONFIDENTIAL
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