TNAG-2363-FCO40-3434-Visits-by-MPs-from-the-UK-to-Hong-Kong-1992 — Page 67

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HOUSE OF COMMONS

LONDON SWIA OAA

ire preparing papers on a draft application to the United Nations for detailed discussions with a range of Governments, including those represented on the Executive. This matter will be discussed in detail by the Executive's Working Party on the United Nations in Geneva on 10th/11th September 1991, which consists of France, Nicaragua, Poland the U.K. I will develop these thoughts in my separate note but meanwhile, I am anxious to overcome some of the practical objections at official level in the hope that we can sustain your support for this proposal in principle as indicated in your recent letter to me.

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Other Executive Matters There was a good deal of general discussion on the IPU's role in the CSCE. So far as the proposed Parliamentary tier is concerned, there was widespread concern expressed about the virtual elimination of IPU representation either in its terms of reference or future composition in favour of an organisation almost totally dominated by the Council of Euorpe and North Atlantic Assembly representation. I am pursuing this matter separately with Michael Jopling as the leader of the British delegation to the proposed CSCE Parliamentary Assembly, con- fident in the fact that he and other members of our delegation which attended the Madrid Conference last month, were all persuaded of the value of tripartite involvement, particularly in off-setting the suspicion in Africa, Asia and Latin America that the whole CSCE process is becoming increasingly Eurocentric. This matter will be discussed in more detail at the IPU CSCE Conference in Vienna from 1st to 3rd July 1991.

On the widening of the CSC process to cover the Mediterranean region, work is in hand through

the French representative on the Executive Committee, Mr. Yves Tavernier, to take this process forward.

He is working on responses received from both North African and European countries of the Mediterranean and is particularly drawn to a Tunisian economic model as the basis for a new assembly in which economic co-operation would predominate. It is also assumed that this assembly could emcompass the affairs of Cyprus.