TNAG-0279-FCO40-315-Visit-of-Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Aff-1970 — Page 73

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CONFIDENTIAL

least to establish a commercial presence there. With reference

toong Kong already available to them in a public agreement we

should find this pressure hard to resist. At the same time the

Russians are well aware that Hong Kong is an extremely sensitive

place for us.

Decision to remove the reference to Hong Kong

from any document to be published

5. After discussions between Lord Shepherd, Mr. Luard and

Mr. Roberts, Minister of State at the Board of Trade,

and reference to Hex Majesty's Ambassador in

Moscow, it was agreed that H.M. Ambassador should sound out the

Russians on the possibility of omitting Article 5 from the document

to be published and including its substance in a separate confidential

documento

Russian Reactions

6. H.M. Ambassador approached the Russians accordingly on 27

February. They received the proposals calmly but said they would

need time to study them before giving us a reply,

7. We recently received the Soviet text of the Supplementary

Agreement and related documents. There were two paragraphs in padticular in these documents which might be interpreted as giving the Russians the right to establish a presence in Hong Kong in one form or another. It was possible that some misunderstanding had

arisen through problems of translation, but to make quite certain that the Agreement could not be interpreted in one way by the Russians and in another way by ourselves H. M. Ambassador was instructed to propose amendments in the Soviet text which in effect would bring the terms of the documents back to the terms originally proposed by us. These instructions were despatched on 6 April. On 9 April we received a telegram from H.M. Ambassador, Moscow, reporting that

CONFIDENTIAL