TNAG-0714-FCO40-910-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 69

HKG 025/2 нка

(48)

RECEN

10. 51

28 MAR 1978

Mrs Yates

cc.

Mr Stratton

DESK OFFRAM

PA

REGISTRY

Action Taken

Mr Hurrell

Mr Lynch Mr Burton

INDEX

No

REVISED PROCEDURES FOR COUNTRY POLICY PAPERS

Herewith the comments which you requested in your minute to the

47 geographical Under Secretaries of 16 March:

1.

Surely Mr Stratton should have been included among the recipients? If you agree, please send him the attached copy of this reply. (In fact, I believe that Mr Stratton leaves for the Pacific this weekend, but his copy will no doubt be fielded by Mr Duff.)

2.

3.

I agree with all Mr Pearson's suggested deletions.

There is not any reference in the draft to the frequencies of the CPPs, and I think there should be. The list at Annexe 2 contains 49 countries and there is a clear implication in paragraph 5(d) of the draft that Ministers would wish to have about 40 papers a year, from which the deduction is implicit that each of the listed countries would be the subject of an annual paper.

A

4. This is not what the Policy Board agreed (paragraph 5(b) of PB(Min)78/3) and I for one attach importace to that agreement. reduction in frequency would perhaps result in 20 CPPs a year, but in my view that is adequate for Ministerial sustenance and more than enough for the Departments' digestion.

5. Paragraph 3 of the draft correctly quotes the current requirement in the OP that countries receiving budgetary aid should receive the full treatment and also quotes the exemption applied to the Dependent Territories and Associated States, without any suggestion that the exemption should be lifted. Annexe 2 includes the recipients of budgetary aid, but all of them are in fact Dependencies In my own Departments' despite, I would not object to the lifting of the exemption - provided my point in paragraph 4 above is met - but what- ever the decision, this inherent contradiction should be clarified.

-

the

6. On reflection, I question without necessarily opposing need for "Conclusions" as a chapter 5 in the proposed draft format. I know that a traditional submission should end with self-contained recommendations, but I have a certain aversion from going over the same ground twice and the omission of the proposed chapter 5 would, by definition, result in shorter papers I in which, as an alternative, the key conclusions could perhaps be underlined.

7. I have doubts about some of "my" countries listed in Annexe 2, to which it would seem that a financial rule of thumb has been applied rather than the concept of "relevance" which found some measure of agreement in the Policy Board. Specifically

i. I would exclude Brazil and Colombia (and resist the inclusion of Mexico) where with the termination of capital aid, we shall have only TC programmes, admittedly large but below the existing £1.5m threshold and virtually "irrelevant" given the size of the countries' economies.

* except Seychelles + WHAS

ii.