TNAG-0716-FCO40-912-Air-hijacking-and-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 18

DSR 11C

CONFIDENTIAL

operated on an ad hoc basis).

(c) Renegotiation of all our ASA's would take years.

An alternative approach would be not to attempt to

introduce any special clause into bilateral agreements but

to give notice that all the participants in the Statement

intended to consider violations by other Governments of the

standards set out in the Statement as endangering the

peaceful use of air services against which the declaratory

government would be bound to take action. Preliminary FCO

legal advice is that such a course might (just) be legally

justifiable and would be preferable.

Recommendations

2. I recommend that at the first meeting in Bonn the

United Kingdom should be guided by the following

considerations:

(a) We should avoid any attempts to water down the

effectiveness of the Statement but we should seek to

define it in a way which avoids the risk of confusion

and of disarray in an actual incident.

(b) We should say that we can accept either a more

detailed formal code or informal ground rules which

could be communicated to all participants, but try to

steer in favour of the latter.

(c) In view of the difficulty which might be involved.

by including such countries as Israel, it might be

best to start by working for a declaration of all

countries of OECD, but we should re-examine this aspect

in the light of others' views.

(d) Action should be taken only when an aircraft of

the adherents to the Statement has been hijacked.

(e) It would be preferable to defer such action until

/a hijacking