TNAG-0279-FCO40-315-Visit-of-Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Aff-1970 — Page 72

CONFIDENTIAL

BACKGROUND

At talks in Moscow in December 1969 the British delegation from

the Board of Trade secured agreement ad referendum to governments

for BOAC to serve Tokyo on the direct trans-Siberian route through

Moscow. In return for these rights we agreed on the same basis

to a trans-Atlantic service through London te New York and to three

other points in North America, and a route via London through

Singapore to Australia.

The draft agreement stated that it was

the intention of BOAC and AEROFLOT to do everything necessary to

determine methods of commercial collaboration by summer 1971 on two

routes in South East Asia; any arrangement would be subject to

approval by the governments,

2. This commercial collaboration was set out in Article 5 of the

document initialled in Moscow. The text of that Article is

attached.

3. The inclusion of Hong Kong was made without the concurrence of

the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The two main objections to

a reference to Hong Kong in what will be a public air services

agreement are that the Chinese Government can be expected to take

very strong exception to it, and also that in the future we might

be giving the Russians an opportunity to establish an official

presence in Hong Kong.

4. In the words of the Governor of Hong Kong the Chinese

Government would construe the agreement as "Hong Kong and Britain flirting with their principal enemy on their very door step". The

Russians, on the other hand, would almost certainly use the

provisions of the agreement at some future date to put pressure on

HMG to allow them either to have traffic rights at Hong Kong or at

1.

CONFIDENTIAL