TNAG-0534-FCO40-629-UK-aid-to-Hong-Kong-Polytechnic-and-technical-institutions-1975 — Page 112

Mr O'Keeffe

CONFIDENTIAT

Reference..

30

HONG KONG : ASSISTANCE TO THE POLYTECHNIC

1.

24

CODE 18-77

Please see the minutes by Mr Wade-Brown and Mrs Johnson (below) and the draft submission they have prepared on the above subject.

2. The draft submission has been cleared with interested parties in the ODM. I accepted the first of Mrs Johnson's proposed amendments (that to paragraph 2) but I would prefer paragraph 25 to be completely redrafted and attach a form of words. made one or two other minor amendments in manuscript.

I have

3. I must admit to some doubt about this whole exercise. As you will see from paragraph 25 of the draft, it sprang from a political decision taken by the previous government. The delay of 2 years from the announcement of this aid project and the present submission results mainly, I am told, from dilatoriness on the part of the Hong Kong authorities. One is left with the impression that, for them, the original gesture was perhaps more important than the project itself. I think it is quite possible that the ODM Projects Committee will draw a similar conclusion and that either they, or Mrs Hart herself, will question the whole project on these grounds. It is true that a commitment to provide the aid was publicly entered into by an FCO junior minister in November 1972, but he was a member of a different (Conservative) government.

4.

Nevertheless, the commitment does devolve on us and we would be failing in our duty if we did not put the project forward, notwithstanding the doubts I have expressed above. I therefore recommend that the draft submission, as amended, should issue.

8 April 1975

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Hong Kong and Indian Ocean Department

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redraft of paragraph

25 which I have sangeet to stringther here and there.

CONFIDENTIAN

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