TNAG-1391-FCO40-1863-Future-of-Hong-Kong-briefing-for-meetings-and-visits-1985 — Page 8

T

RESTRICTED

i.

the short (ie less than half a day) talk with another Head of Government or other overseas visitor, usually tete-a-tete or with Foreign Ministers and a few officials only present;

ii. the full-scale Prime Ministerial visit (inward or outward) with or without the participation of other Ministers; together with major bilateral summits (on the Anglo-French or Anglo-German pattern) at which the Prime Minister leads a team of Ministeral colleagues; and

iii. multilateral meetings of Heads of Government.

Short Bilateral Meetings

The proposals put forward by Charles Powell (annexed to this letter) are essentially designed for this sort of bilateral meeting, for which the briefing is at present normally supplied by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the form of a single

a very restricted number of briefs cleared as necessary with other Departments. You agreed that, for future such meetings, the briefing should follow the new format. I hope that it will normally be possible for there to be a single brief covering all the subjects likely to be raised, with any necessary detailed background in annexes.

Full-scale Prime Ministerial Visits and Major Bilateral Summits

It is more difficult to apply this format to briefing for Prime Ministerial visits and major bilateral summits, given that the briefing may have to serve Ministers other than the Prime Minister (and senior officials), and will normally need to cover a larger number of subjects. We agreed that it would not be sensible to prepare different sets of briefs on the same subjects for different Ministers attending summits. Bearing this in mind, I suggest that the present system could be modified as follows:

a.

The scene-setting letter which you send me about a month before the summit, copied to Permanent Secretaries in other Whitehall Departments, should continue. It should, however, concentrate on setting out more clearly United Kingdom objectives and the objectives and subjects likely to be raised by the other side information on the latter to be based on whatever our post is able to glean from the other Government. There should also be a clear distinction between major and minor objectives - one of the criticisms of the old "objectives" letter which preceded the "scene-setting" letter was that no distinction was made between major objectives such as reforming the Community budget and minor bilateral problems.

b. A proposed list of briefs should be, as at present, circulated with the scene-setting letter. This list should relate clearly to the objectives set out in the letter and should include only subjects likely to be raised substantively at Head of Government level. The list should be cleared in advance with the OD and European Secretariats of the Cabinet Office. My office will then, again as at present, issue a commissioning letter with the list of

/briefs,