TNAG-0525-FCO40-620-Visit-of-UK-Members-of-Parliament-(Defence-and-External-Affa-1975 — Page 15

trouble. That is a loose zondexing of the way it is coen.

CHAINIAN: I think we were told the recruiting was under-strength for the

police. You might have said why not do more about the police who rely

heavily on the foury. We were told that they were not really recruiting the

number of police they should.

That may be so. If I remember, the

Governor did mention something on these lines. I thought he said

recruiting hed improved lately. I think it is a difficult question, and

I do not think we would vent to see the amy used as an alternative to the

police. We do not see that as its role. It is a back-up role in internal

security, but I do not think it would be right for the Hong Kong

Government to rely upon the Amy for what essentially are police duties.

(Iir Andrew) I believe the police force has been considerably increased

since 1967 then the last riots took place, and we certainly see the

Army's role essentially as back-up. We would see the two forces as

complementary. There are certain specialised tasks which the police camot

do.

CHATININ: We were briefed twice by the police; once at headquarters and

once at the district level and we got this fron both of them.

IR SAUDELSON: I would like to add my congratulations to what has been said

for what would seen to be an agreement which none of us round this table

hed though possible from the talks we had over thore. I hope the agreement

does go through as the finister is so clearly hoping. What would the

Minister consider, in his own words, to be the philosophy behind British

retention of military interest in Hong Kong at all?

A. (Rt. Hon.

Million Modeers) y philosophy I think would be that at the moment there

Cal

an

ནའི ་མ ཆོ །|:ཀྱང ཀ ར ི ཀར བིཀ དང ཊ། | ཀ ར སྡཤ ཤ ཀཅ ར ༩ད ཟས ཀྱང རྐང ? 4 ཟཀ “

aminted

One is London, another

e

is Peking and the thing is Hong Kong, and the unarticulated understanding is

that the status quo should ronzines long as possible because it is a mutual

convenionec. In a situation of this kind, if some part of the ababug ang

is unreasonable it will upset the other parties and they may feel it is

2.7

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