TNAG-1117-FCO40-1391-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1982 — Page 179

#1

เ

CONFIDENTIAL

2

DSR 11C

3. The official activities of the Commonwealth include the

biennial CHOGM, the annual Finance Ministers meeting, held

just before the annual meeting of the IMF and the World

Bank, and triennial Ministerial meetings in health,

education, law and agriculture.

Officials meet on these

and many other subjects such as civil aviation, forestry,

postal administration and telecommunications.

Commonwealth

senior officials meet biennially in the year in which

CHOGM is not held. There are also Commonwealth aid

programmes, such as the Commonwealth Fund for Technical

Cooperation (CFTC), the Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP)

and the Commonwealth Science Council (CSC), and the Common-

wealth Foundation fosters a wide range of professional

contacts among, for example, engineers, architects,

journalists and nurses. The Commonwealth Development

Corporation (CDC) invests in projects in most Commonwealth

I

countries, and more recently in some non-Commonwealth

countries too.

i

4. There are also a large number of non-official

Commonwealth bodies, such as the Royal Commonwealth

Society and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

5. There is currently a trend towards regionalism

in the Commonwealth. For example there have been two

meetings recently of Heads of Government of the Asia-

Pacific region. There have been discussions from time to

time of a Caribbean grouping, and Commonwealth African

countries meet in the margins of the Organisation of

1

African Unity (OAU) meetings.