CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
(a) Wednesday 19 June:
Dinner with Lord Goronwy-Roberts. Lord Goronwy-Roberts would be happy to dine with you. Lady Goronwy-Roberts will be in town if you would like this, or you could dine tête-à-tête.
(e) Friday 21 June. We would have preferred an earlier
meeting with the Secretary of State but he will not now be back from Ottawa until the 21st, and even then we may have difficulty in slipping a meeting in before his weekend engagements. But we will do our best,
particularly in view of your letter to Duncan Watson of 10 May about the death penalty.
(f) Meeting with Lord Bridges.
I have spoken to Tom Bridges. He would be glad to meet you but suggests that this might be on a social occasion, perhaps for lunch or a drink. He doubts whether there will be much business for him to talk with you. Nor, unless you particularly wish it, does he propose to set up a meeting with the Prime Minister. His reason is that the Prime Minister's interest, and therefore professionally his own, is necessarily at the moment focused elsewhere than on Hong Kong. If you agree and have time for lunch with him, then perhaps Thursday 20 June would do? He has another engagement on the 17th.
2. On subjects for discussion, I attach a first shot at an annotated agenda. This covers the field and I doubt if we shall be able to deal with all of it. But I am certain that Lord Goronwy-Roberts will aim for a tour d'horizon with you on the theme "Whither Hong Kong". He is feeling his way towards a consistent policy but is avoiding firm conclusions until he has covered the spectrum with you. We have encouraged this. He has already had a number of visitors such as Lord Kennet, James Johnson, Hilton Cheong-leen, and Sir A Rodrigues, all of whom have urged on him their own partial considerations. We have stressed the dangers of pulling one strand of policy out of the Hong Kong ball without considering the effect on related issues. He accepts this but is verging on the general conclusion that, when the whole field of policy has been reviewed, "something will need to be done about Hong Kong". The second and fourth items on the agenda are those which have been urged upon him by James Johnson after his visit to Hong Kong, and which I think are close to the focus of his own professional and political interest.
Yours ever,
Andrew
A C Stuart
Hong Kong & Indian Ocean Dept.
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERGORAL
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