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sensitive non-cotton goods. All this was however subject to the agreement of the member states.
4.
In July, Pat Dodge carried out the major part of his agreed programme of visits to Community capitals to put Hong Kong's case on GSP. For part of the tour he was accompanied and ably seconded by Peter Tsao of the Commerce and Industry Department who happened to be in Europe on other business. The Hong Kong representatives seemed reasonably pleased with the result. The Belgians, Danes and Germans were the most sympathetic though it emerged that the Danes had not really decided their attitude over footwear. On textiles they proposed to adhere to their traditionally liberal policy. The Germans were ready to concede footwear but made it clear that they could not support the removal of all discrimination on textiles. The Italians and the French were reserved and the Dutch, who did not consent to receive Dodge until 17 September, the most negative of all. This is believed to reflect the personal views of the Minister for Development Cooperation, M. Pronk, who is not prepared to accept that Hong Kong is a developing country. In view of this it is clear that acceptance even of the Community's modest proposals as outlined by M. Tran is far from being a foregone conclusion.
5.
On completion of Dodge's mission, the Hong Kong representatives expressed their thanks and appreciation of the assistance they had received from our Missions in Europe.
6.
Mainly because of the insistence of DOI, whose interests over GSP as on some other matters tend to diverge somewhat from the rest of us, we did not inform Hong Kong about Tran's visit. Pat Dodge who had got wind of it remonstrated about it at an informal meeting in London towards the end of his mission. We did our best to placate him and Teddy Kidd, who was also present, by saying that the meeting with Tran had been of a preliminary nature in which Tran had expounded his personal ideas in a confidential exchange between Community partners, implying this as the reason why we had not felt free to divulge details of the discussion with Tran. The Hong Kong representatives seemed to accept this and appeared in any case already to know about Tran's thinking in general.
TEXTILES/MFA
7.
Consideration of the so-called mandates which are to form the basis for the Community's bilateral agreements with the major suppliers of cottons and polyesters called for under the GATT/MFA have been going on in Brussels for several months. The first of the agreements to be concluded will concern India and Pakistan with Hong Kong next in Line.
8.
The British position is that we cannot agree the mandates without a satisfactory settlement over "burden sharing" This has proved a thorny problem since the major share of the 6+% growth in quotas to which the Community is committed under the MFA will have to be absorbed by others since Britain is already by far the greatest single importer among the Nine. The DOI, battling for the British textile industry, first took the view that there should be no growth
/at all
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