GONE:
CONFIDENTIAL
Despo
3
12/5.
Ivor Richard, Esq, QC,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
12 May 1977
Mucike to
du. Jasper Whiten
UK Mission to the United Nations, Tim
NEW YORK
RECEIVED IN
REGISTRY No. 51
1 3 MAY 1977
нка
0023/3
FUTURE OF THE DEPENDENT TERRITORIES
13157
Iam cculent tuul-whe should hold this but I have no idea what to do celant it. wins would presumably
not be too keen on ow interference
2
teils
This is
Many thanks indeed for your letter of 10 May. very timely. Owing to the preoccupations of Ministers (and officials) we haven't yet made substantial progress with the conclusions, or perhaps I should say reflections, from the Caribbean tour and Governors' Conference, which Patrick Duff and I undertook in February. The formal policy position remains as stated in the Secretary of State's despatch of 13 June 1975. Ministers are generally aware that it is time to rethink the contents of that despatch for a number of the Dependent Territories, but are waiting for officials to produce some properly worked proposals.
2. Some official work has of course started, and this is an excellent moment to feed into it the many very helpful ideas and suggestions in your letter. I think we may want to debate some of them with you further. But at this stage I will only say that I have fully taken on board your point about the need for close consultation with you at all stages of our thinking on the UN aspects. These aspects are a very large part of the whole question.
3. Against this background I am not sure how far we shall be able to go on alternatives to independence, as it is customarily defined, with the Caymans' Visiting Mission on 24 May.
I am very grateful for your advice on how to handle this for the purposes of their report and we shall prepare ourselves accordingly. Beyond that I hope that there will be time and the right atmosphere for some more personal and fuller exchanges about the philosophy of decolonisation, and the duties of an administering power towards both its very small Dependencies and the international community, in the late seventies.
co:
Mr Simpson-Orlebar, UND
Mr Duff, WIAD
HSH Stanley
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Stewart, HKGD- I think that HKGD should be the master
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Department for this wide-ranging letter.
C
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