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5.
(a) that dependent territories lie outside the Customs territory of the UK and are not governed by UK Customs and financial legislation. In support, I enclose copies of the 1947 Exchange Control Act, the 1952 Customs and Excise Act and the 1970 Finance Act.
(b) that dependent territories enjoy de facto autonomy
in the sense that they operate their own Customs organisation and manage their own trade and reserves (if any). In support, I enclose the Constitution, Customs Ordinance and Estimates of the British Solomon Islands, as a typical dependency.
We hope that the Japanese will not insist on similar documentation for every dependency, at least as a pre-requisite for a decision in principle that dependencies can qualify for Japanese preferences on the terms to be incorporated in their draft Bill:- that is to say, as "territories which are at a developing stage and which have Customs and trade systems of their own. . . . " On this basis we hope the Japanese will (again, in principle) accept the countries/territories in the list we tabled in UNCTAD, always subject to their complying with the procedures for the issue of valid (i.e. official) certificates of origin, as agreed in UNCTAD.
6.
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The list of dependent territories with membership of United Nations organisations is not impressive enough to warrant an Annex to the Aide Memoire, but you could point out orally that several dependent territories are members of UN specialised agencies such as the International Tele- communication Union, the Universal Postal Union and the World Meteorological Organisation; some, such as Hong Kong, British Honduras and the British Solomon Islands are associate members of UN regional bodies such as ECLA and ECAFE.
7. My next point will be familiar to you. We would not want the weight of our representations on behalf of the dependent territories in general to have adverse reper- cussions on Hong Kong's chances of admission to the Japanese beneficiary list. I leave it to your discretion to adjust the present approach accordingly.
8. Finally, defensive points. The first is that the Japanese may well wish to probe HMG's intentions towards beneficiaries in general and dependencies in particular. Endo has discussed this at length with Kemmis of the DTI in
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