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So we had some weeks of long and difficult argument. But
we had to stick to our guns. The only alternative was capitulation.
You can imagine what that would have meant.
Although we thought that
the Community's demands were excessive, I was determined that through-
out these negotiations the Hong Kong delegation should keep its
cool" and maintain a reasonable defensible line. Although some
rather provocative public statements were mad by the other side,
we declined to be provoked into any intempera:e response.
This is not just because we in the Department are all mild,
sweet-tempered people but because I think it is bad tactics to
conduct a negotiation in such a way that your opponents can divert
attention from the content of their proposals by attacking the style
of your response to them.
I mention all this because I want to nail one correspondent
suggestion that the negotiations deteriorated into a slanging match.
They did not.
Indeed at one point, I remember that I insisted on toning
down one of Mr. Mills' speeches to such an extent that he must have
wondered whether this was still the same Director he thought he knew.
Against this background what does the new Agreement look
like and why has our assessment of its effects changed? To put it
briefly: in tems of the original MFA it is a bad agreement: there
are several elements which we have to recognise as being outside
the provisions of the MFA. But in trade terms it could be a lot
worse. For, except in a very few categories for certain Member
States, we have been able to provide our manufacturers and exporters
with quotas for 1978 which will enable them to ship as much as they
did in 1977. But, as I said right at the beginning, this isn't a
/white
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