TNAG-0331-FCO40-367-Visits-of-Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Af-1972 — Page 118

Mr Laird

CONFIDENTIAL

Reference:

with

@s

SECRETARY OF STATE'S VISIT TO HONG KONG

1.

Your minute of 17 January. The only comments I have are on the draft speech (Hong Kong telegram No. 30);

and both of these are on textiles.

2.

-

K

Firstly and we briefly discussed this during the talks with Hong Kong last week there seems no reason to highlight as paragraph 3 of the telegram does the different treatment now given by the Community to textiles. I would suggest that either the last sentence of that paragraph is deleted altogether or "members of the Community" is replaced by "countries".

3. My second comment is on paragraph 10. I applaud the underlying themes of this paragraph, namely that in current textile trading conditions there is a limit to what exporting countries can send to the developed countries; and that diversification is a very necessary objective for Hong Kong. Nevertheless you may feel, in the light of the talks, that the phrase "under the restraints which you have so wisely negotiated" needs amendment. Perhaps to avoid a change narrowly tied to the state of the talks with Hong Kong it might be better to reflect the thought by saying "but even where Hong Kong has to operate restraints in its trade with other countries".

Прим

HE J Hale

18 January 1972

Commodities Department

33

EID(1)

CONFIDENTIAL