TNAG-0504-FCO40-569-Review-of-narcotics-problem-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 179

CONFIDENTIAL

BY BAG

布政司署

港下亞畢道

ECLIPSEQ

COLONIAL SECRETARIAT

LOWER ALBERT ROAD

HONG KONG

RECEIVED IN

**** OUR Ref.:

SCR 4/1316/73

* YOUR REF.:

REGISTRY No. 51 1) FEB 1974

Entr

R B CROWSON ESQ

Hong Kong and Indian

Ocean Department

F CO

Jaan Dizda

1JKK19/2

REF.

LAST

5

| S

NEXT

REF.

4 February 1974

Моубный

11/2

des minute for early coversation, /.

стинный

Norman Rolph wrote to Chris Train on 11 January about trilateral consultations with the United States at the forthcoming meeting of the U N Narcotics Commission at Geneva.

2.

Dick Hart of the US Consulate-General told me the other day that the Americans were considering proposing, probably at the Geneva meeting, that there should be a joint US/UK approach to the Chinese to get them to join the Commission, which hitherto they have attended only as observers. I do not know if you have heard anything of this proposal. It is really outside the scope of the trilateral discussions, but may well be tossed around in them. Insofar as Hong Kong has a view I would say that while we would see an advantage in China being associated with the work of the Commission, we are not sure of the merits of the United Kingdom and the United States being seen together making a demarche to the Chinese.

We are even a little wary of HMG taking an initiative in encouraging the Chinese to join the Commission, since, given that the British interest in international narcotics problems is so closely bound up with Hong Kong, you might seem to be inviting Chinese interest in our affairs. But we would see no overriding objection to a discreet unilateral approach, since circumstances could well arise when we would be glad of Chinese assistance, say, in matters relating to opium production and the trawler traffic. The American interest in narcotics is however somewhat different, and domestic considerations might well compel them to seek Chinese help also in bringing pressure on Hong Kong to bear either direct or through you and this could have repercussions far outside the drugs field. For this reason I am not at all sure that we should at the outset be seen too closely in the Americans' company on this particular exercise.

3.

I am sorry to be pernickety; to Hong Kong is so damned touchy.

everything relating

Yours Timestan

C.S. 41A

сс C J Train Esq

Home Office

(T JB George)

Chancery, Peking. CONFIDENTIAL