TNAG-0464-FCO40-529-Entitlement-of-Hong-Kong-to-EEC-Generalised-Scheme-of-Prefer-1974 — Page 27

1

171

Mr Hert

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No. 51 28 OCT 1974

Mr Manya to see

IRK 64/590/11, Braithwaits

cc Mr Stuart, HKIDD

HONG KONG

25/10

р.а

25%

I have discussed with

1. At Mr Kidd's lunch today we had a further discussion of the draft memorandum which the Hong Kong Authorities would like to put to the Commission.

2. The Hong Kong officials remained strongly of the

view that they should put in a memorandum for the following reasons:-

3.

(a)

(b)

they wanted Hong Kong views to be taken into account by the Commission before the Community decided on its mandate for the textile negotiations;

in particular they wished to make the points set out in para 5 of the draft concerning Articles 3 and 4 of the MultiFibre Arrangement;

(c) they did not believe that the negot- iations would be properly begun, let alone completed, by the beginning of next year. It was therefore essential that they should give their businessmen an early idea of the regime which would prevail. This meant in effect the continuation of unilateral restraints (para 7 of the draft);

(a)

for Hong Kong domestic political reasons they would need to be able to demonstrate that they had taken action.

In reply I said:

(a)

(b)

that the thought in para 5 had seemed to us to be an incautious challenge to the Community. I accepted that the Hong Kong Authorities intended no such challenge, and it might be that British officials had been unduly influenced by the arguments set out in the recent telegram to Hong Kong from Mr Dorwood which talked about Hong Kong playing its "last card";

that I understood the arguments which the Hong Kong officials put forward about the thought in para 7. They seemed to me to be reasonable. I would investigate further why the Hong Kong decision had provoked resentment earlier in the year within the Community.

/4. We agreed