TNAG-0348-FCO40-384-Costs-of-extra-services-provided-by-armed-forces-of-UK-in-Ho-1972 — Page 58

CONFIDENTIAL

exchange between Hall of the then Commonwealth Office

and Cass which took place in October 1967. I do not

deny that Hall wrote in the terms

described and

that he quoted the opinion of another senior officer

of the Commonwealth Office. All I can say, and from

personal experience which neither of the others

concerned had, is that they were wrong in the views

they expressed. The fence was not "in the nature

of an immigration control measure", except as a

subsidiary option to its main purpose.

4. I hope that you will be willing to look into

this matter again in the light of my further

explanation and after a study of the Kong Kong

Government report. In the event that the Ministry

of Defence still find themselves unable to accept

that the cost of the fence should fall on their

vote we agree with the suggestion in paragraph 4

of Curzon's letter to me of 24 February that the

Treasury should be asked to arbitrate.

A

However,

we feel that (in the first place, at any rate) such

arbitration should be as between the Ministry of

Defence and the Hong Kong Government. For this

reason we feel that the last two sentences in

paragraph 2(a) of the draft enclosed with Curzon's

letter should be omitted (they do not affect the

position as between the Ministry of Defence and

Hong Kong). We have also somewhat expanded the

draft, and I enclose a copy of the revised version.

If you are content with it, we should be X happy for

B

/you

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