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CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Youde
хожде
HONG KONG AND THE UNITED NATIONS
1. You commented on paragraph 3 of UKMIS New York's saving telegram No 99 of 8 October that you could not see that an exchange of letters with the UN Secretariat was necessary or even desirable. I fear that partly because the papers were circulating among departments, and partly because of pressure of business in this department action on this matter has been inordinately delayed. UKMIS New York have now reminded us that they await a reply.
Background
2. In September the Chinese questioned the designation of Hong Kong in UN documents. They lodged an informal complaint with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) over the designation of Hong Kong as "Government of Hong Kong" in a UNDP document dated 23 August. They indicated that the use of this term in future UN documents would lead to an official complaint. The Chinese suggested the UNDF should list Hong Kong under the category
country or region" instead of "government".
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3. Later in September UKMIS New York reported that a similar problem had arisen in connection with the listing of Hong Kong in the estimated world requirements of narcotic drugs. Hong Kong is listed under "United Kingdom" under the general heading "countries and non-metropolitan countries" The Secretariat suggested changing the overall heading to "countries and territories". This, however, would be inconsistent with the formula proposed by the Chinese in the UNDP context.
4.
We therefore suggested to Hong Kong and UKMIS, New York that greater consistency could be achieved by the use of the expression
country, territory or region" in each context where the problem occurred. We also supported Hong Kong's suggestion that an exchange of letters would be desirable in order to protect our position. Both Hong Kong and New York agreed in principle with the new designation "country, territory or region", but UKMIS pointed out that it would be difficult in practice to achieve uniformity in the description of Hong Kong in all UN documents,
5. We also considered whether the listing of all entries alpha- betically in the UN documents as proposed by the Secretariat would affect our freedom to include representatives from Hong Kong and other dependent territories as appropriate in the UN delegation. The Secretariat agrees with the Mission's view that the manner of listing Hong Kong could not affect that freedom since the listing was a procedural question which could not affect the substance. (UKMIS telegram 99 of 8 October paragraph 4).
CONFIDE TIAL
/Exchange
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