CONFIDENTIAL COVERING SECRET
Mr Davies (Far Eastern Department K 248)
1.
UN Department is concerned only peripherally with the substance either of international narcotics control or relations with the Chinese. If therefore FED, HKIOD and the Home Office are agreed that it would be useful and in our interests both in relation to Hong Kong and China to discuss the problem of illicit drug trafficking in South East Asia with the Chinese we certainly would not want to counsel against it. (In parenthesis, however, I cannot say I find maras 42-44 of Mr Rolph's report terribly convincing: it seems to me that the Chinese already take a high moral line about narcotics and would not be inhibited by their current non-membership of the Narcotics Commission and INCB from putting pressure on Burma, Thailand or Laos. However, I had understood that the difficulty of controlling illicit trafficking arose mainly because the governments of these 3 countries simply do not have the physical power to enforce their role in the areas where production and trafficking takes place. I do not see how Chinese membership of the relevant international bodies would change this situation. Moreover, I wonder whether, if Chinese influence could be so efficacious in this field, bwould not spread over into other aspects of the life in those countries where it might not be so welcome to us.)
2. So far as the UN is concerned there are straight- forward procedures for countries to present their candida- tures for this or that body and I dare say it will not be long before the Chinese, who were present as observers at the last session of the Narcotics Commission, will apply for membership. In that case I am sure that we should support them and that we would support them if they applied for an Asian vacancy on the INCB. Nor would there be any harm in our saying, in the course of bilateral discussions, that we looked forward to their joining the relevant international organis tions But I think that it would be misguided to start wit talking about the UN bodies since, without prior aureement about our joint interest in practical measures to deal with the illicit traffic and its effects on Hong Kong, there would be the risk that the Narcotics Commission would simply be another UN body where the Chinese have the opportunity to bring up their difference with us over the status of Hong Kong.
3. As regards the question of a visit to Peking by Sir Farry Greenfield, the only point I would add to the comments we have already made is that if we can indeed talk frankly to the Chinese on any subject we wish to raise, the visit would be unnecessary if its purpose was to sound out the Chinese attitude, as suggested by Mr Rolph. Incidentally, though I may be quite off beam here, having not seen the full records the Chinese expression of concern about the addiction problem in Hong Kong to visiting MPs may have been
/intended rather as
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