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Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1
Telephone 01- 839-8866 Ext 53
DA
14
A
3
RP Hope Esq
∙C & T Division
Department of Trade and Industry
20th Floor
Millbank Tower
Your reference
Our reference MTC 13/393/1
Date
2 May 1973
Dear Robin
IMPORT RESTRICTIONS ON KNITTED TEXTILES
1. In your minute of 4 April to Liz Lowne you invited comments on your draft brief for the meeting with the Knitting Industries Federation.
2.
We agree generally with the gist of what you say. You will have seen however from paragraph 7 of Hong Kong telegram No.368 of 4 April that Hong Kong is not attracted to the idea of token ceilings. We share the se misgivings since, in the last analysis, any ceiling is finite. While we recognise the difficulties with which you are faced, we hope it will be possible to reach a Community solution which does not give other member states an opportunity to secure unjustified restrictions.
3. We should also like to see a change of emphasis in the third sen- tence of your last paragraph. Rather than express a wish to adopt policies with which we disagree in order to obtain concessions, we prefer something on the following lines!
"We may be forced to adopt certain unwelcome features of our
partners' regimes including perhaps some ceilings on knitted goods. If these are forced upon us we shall have to accept them. In this case we could try, as a quid pro quo, to obtain concessions on other matters such as on free circulation."
Yours ever, Ken. Ка
K W Hazle
Trade Relations Department
Copies to:
Mr Goodfellow (HKIOD) Mr Hall (EID)
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