TNAG-1160-FCO40-1440-Visit-by-Margaret-Thatcher--UK-Prime-Minister--to-Hong-Kong--1982 — Page 7

CONFIDENTIAL

RECORD OF CONVERSATION WITH MR MATSUNAGA, ECONOMIC DEPUTY MINISTER AT THE JAPANESE FOREIGN MINISTRY, AT 1500 HOURS ON 2 SEPTEMBER.

Visit of Prime Minister to Japan

General Points

1.

M said that he was calling on me as the personal representative of the Japanese Prime Minister, whom he had seen yesterday. Suzuki was very much looking forward to the Prime Minister's visit, extremely anxious to make it useful and fruitful as well as agreeable, and ready to make every possible effort to contribute to its success. The visit should have a significant place in the history of Anglo- Japanese relations. It was most desirable to reconstruct these relations. They had hitherto not been suffiently explored or developed. I responded appropriately.

Economic Questions

2. M said that Nissan were not yet in a position to make a final decision, but their President would like to be received by the British Prime Minister. If Mrs Thatcher chose to mention this project in Tokyo, Suzuki would reply that it was a matter for the company, but that if the project could be realised the Japanese government would be delighted, given the importance which it could have in Anglo-Japanese relations. M suggested that this would be an appropriate way of giving top level blessing to the Nissan scheme without appearing to take the matter out of the hands of the companies. I took note and said that we would comment if we disagreed.

3. M then spoke about the proposed technology agreement. He had the impression that the British side was not strongly interested in this. He himself thought it would be an excellent moment to sign such an agreement. If the chance was lost this time, it would be a long time before another opportunity occurred. He was aware of two difficulties raised by the British side:-

(a) we were reluctant to include the word 'science' in the title.

The problem here was that Japan had concluded several agreements of this kind, all of them with the word 'science' in the title. To exclude it from the agreement with Britain would imply that there was something very special about it. Moreover if the agreement was simply on technology MITI would claim the sole right of competence, whereas M thought that a number of Ministries ought to be involved on the Japanese side. He understood that we did not wish basic science to be covered, but this point could be met: it would be for governments to decide on the implementation of the agreement anyway.

(b) M understood that we wanted to mention participation by

private sectors. This was covered by the provision for Joint Commissions including 'experts' who could be from the private sector. If Britain needed to have an interpretation could be easily arranged.

of this point, it

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