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severe, could leave us with no alternative but to deploy UK based staff to carry out essential functions. This would be disruptive, expensive and presentationally very difficult.
4. On the other hand, I recognise that, whilst ideally I should like to seek guarantees for all the garrison locally entered staff, the constraint imposed on overall numbers makes such an aspiration
difficult to meet. But I believe it is reasonable to seek
guarantees for up to about 2000 or 50%. Such a figure is comparable to the maximum number of personnel we would need to deploy from the UK in the event of all the locally engaged staff becoming
unavailable or unreliable. It can therefore be regarded as the
minimum necessary to preserve the garrison's effectiveness in its
most important tasks.
5. Clearly further work needs to be done on the mechanics of selection, but I believe this can sensibly be pursued separately and by officials in the first instance. All I seek at this stage is
agreement to the award of up to 2000 assurances to locally entered
garrison staff. With dependents, that would amount to a total of
about 7500 out of the overall ceiling of 225,000.
6. I am copying this minute to OD (K) colleagues, and to Sir Robin
Butler.
21st December 1989
Ministry of Defence
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(TK)
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