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possible, without any formal treaty or thirteenth seat at the table. Herr Sudhoff said that the French should be more flexible: there should be more high-level contacts.
Article 23 and German Unification
8.
Mr Synnott asked whether it was procedurally possible for joint elections to be held in the FRG and GDR in December 1990. Herr Sudhoff said that he did not know. While the Basic Law considers GDR citizens to be Germans, the electoral law confined the right to vote to West Germans. If it was felt that this arrangement was no longer tenable, the electoral law could be changed.
Aid
9.
The PUS asked whether Bonn would be adopting CSCE-style criteria in its policy towards Third World countries, by, for example, connecting aid to States' performance on human rights and political pluralism. The UK was moving increasingly in this direction. Herr Sudhoff said that, with a few exceptions (Nicaragua, Ethiopia), the FRG's policy was to assist the very poorest countries, irrespective of their political system. Were political conditions attached to aid disbursement, Third World countries would under present circumstances see this simply as a pretext to justify greater FRG concentration on Eastern Europe. The PUS said that Ministers had commented that assistance to Eastern Europe should not be at the expense of aid to traditional recipients. Herr Sudhoff considered that the FRG's future effort would be in the form of grants rather than loans, which simply led to the recipients building up enormous debts.
Hong Kong 10.
The PUS gave an exposition of HMG's position, explaining that the proposal to give right of abode in the UK to 250,000 Hong Kong residents was an encouragement to them to stay, not to leave. Anything which the FRG Government could do to help, perhaps by giving similar treatment to Hong Kong employees of German firms, would be appreciated.
But
Herr Sudhoff said that he had taken this up with German industry, and also with the Ministry of the Interior. this was a difficult time to press the point; the Ministry of the Interior had other distractions.
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Richard Joues
RHF Jones
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