TNAG-0281-FCO40-317-Visit-of-the-Chancellor-of-the-Duchy-of-Lancaster-to-Hong-Ko-1970 — Page 137

NOTHING TO BE Written IN THIS MARGIN

دار

CONFIDENTIAL

to the Six, and to the United States and

Japan, that Hong Kong should be included in

this scheme.

Japan appears firmly opposed

we still hope thist

to this, but the EEC and the U.S.A. may be

prepared to consider our request more

favourably.

Tactics

8. In these circumstances, our preliminary

view is that we should try to forestall

developments unfavourable to Hong Kong by

opening discussions with the Six on the future

regime for Hong Kong at a fairly early stage

in our negotiations, taking the line that your

problems in relation to an enlarged Community

must be discussed as a whole, including both

tariffs and quantitative restrictions.

We

should of course argue, in this context, that

Hong Kong must obtain substantial benefit from

the UNCTAD generalised preferences scheme as

it will be applied by an enlarged Community,

and we should attempt to reduce to a minimum

any common restrictions on Hong Kong imports.

But I would emphasise that this is our

preliminary view only. It could be argued that

too early a discussion of your problems with the

Six, before the general question of association

arrangements has been tackled, might be counter-

productive.. I should be very interested to

hear your views on all this.

Textiles: if asked whether Britain intends

to exclude non-cotton and/or cotton textiles

from her UNCTAD offer

9. This is something which IMG is currently

examining.

We must of course take into