(885363) Dd. 896639 1,000м 8/71 St.S.
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Registry
No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
.In Confidence
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
DRAFT
LETTER
To:-
His Excellency
Sir Murray MacLehose
KCMG MBE
Governor
HONG KONG
Type 1 +
From
Sir D Watson
Telephone No. & Ext.
Department
1.
Thank you for your letter of 28 December
about the Underground Railway.
2. We are duly relaxed about the standing of the
British bid and have always been so, though I am
grateful for your confirmation that all is as we
understood it to be. Nor did we intend to solicit
further technical detail at this stage. This is in
the safe hands of the consortium and the DTI at this
end, and Philip Haddon-Cave and Jones have kindly
been keeping Aston briefed and through him us.
3. We are also unworried that the Hong Kong
Government might forget HMG's interest in getting
this contract, and that you might fail to warn us
if we looked like slipping. You have always made
it clear that you would remember.
The Executive Council paper will obviously be
the best round-up on all these points. We will read
it with interest and will have very much in mind the
need for discretion.
5. My point was rather that, as you of course know,
there are political questions which fall outside the
commercial negotiations proper, and outside our own
interest, as a bidder, in getting the contract for
the UK. Some of these questions, such as the period
of the contract, its financing and its repayment,
4.
I hope Hat
we shall see it be
before
it is taken.
/and the
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