TNAG-0852-FCO40-1062-Visits-of-Royal-Navy-ships-to-Hong-Kong-and-China-1979 — Page 57

Mrs M Williams

DS 5

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

Ministry of Defence

Main Building

Whitehall

SW 1

R+B

어느

6.19/1

(D

N Williamson (sent to us mainly for the

record-see past pps.)

Telephone 01- 233 5478

TICK 076/;. 31

RECEIVE

Your reference

Our reference

121711

D/DS5/61/276/77

Date

16 January 1979

No

Jalif Jali

Dear Mary

DEPLOYMENT OF RN TASK GROUP 317.8

W191

HKK obal,

1975 1. I am sorry not to have replied sooner to your letter of T4 December about Task Group 317.8. But we have, of course, discussed CINCFLEET's plans informally on more than one occasion.

2. I anticipated three possible areas where FCO geographical departments would wish to suggest changes in the deployment programme, namely:

i) East Africa

ii)

India

iii) The South-West Pacific

As far as East Africa is concerned our main interest was that there should be an RN visit to Kenya before too long. But in fact, the Navy have looked after our interests there very well by sending the MIDLINK ships to Mombassa over Christmas and the New Year. In the circumstances, we are content for Kenya to be omitted from the programme for TG 317.8, although we hope Kenya could be visited again in 1980. As far as India is concerned, you will have seen that the High Commissioner considers on balance that it would be best to omit India from this year's programme.

In our

3. That leaves us with the South Pacific. It was agreed at the recent Constitutional Conference for the Gilbert Islands that they would achieve independence in early July. Our best estimate is that the independence celebrations will take place at the end of the first week in July. view, it would be singularly unfortunate if there were to be no RN ship present on the occasion of the Gilbert Islands independence. I also think that Ministers, both ours and yours, would find it difficult to explain away the RN's absence in a year when a large task group of ships is visiting so many territories in the South Pacific. I know that CINCFLEET's original reason for not including the Gilberts was that there was no certainty about the actual timing of independence. Now that we are able to go firm on dates, I hope very much that the programme can be adjusted. We would be prepared

/to

CONFIDENTIAL