23 December 1991
CONFIDENTIAL
D C Moss Esq
International Aviation Directorate
Department of Transport
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 3EB
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
Jier Javid,
HK/CHINA AIR SERVICES
In his telegram commenting on the way forward after JLGXXI (Peking telno 2094 enclosed) Sir R McLaren suggests that in the light of the continuing deadlock in the JLG, we need a careful re-examination of our policy on Hong Kong's ASAS, including whether confidentiality of CMUS is a tenable position.
I agree with this. Indeed I feel the need for a paper which looks at the broad range of Hong Kong/China/Taiwan Air Services policy. I have seen the correspondence between Michael Fielder and FED on UK/Taiwan Air Services, and I know that Hong Kong are still considering the issue of through-running which arose in the UK/PRC talks. I am not suggesting that there are, or should be, cross-linkages. the separate activity on all these related fronts will make it particularly useful to have a paper which looks at the whole picture. I think the main operational focus should be on how to move forward the Hong Kong ASA separation problem, since time is not on our side on that.
But
What I would propose is that Hong Kong Department here should take the lead in drafting a paper. As noted above, this would concentrate on Hong Kong ASAS and the separation process, but also including passages on Hong Kong/China and UK/Taiwan. The aim would be to identify clearly those areas where we are defending the UK's interests (and which are therefore not negotiable given the objective that the UK should not pay a price for separation) and those areas where we are defending Hong Kong's interests (and which might be negotiable, if Hong Kong agree, in order to free up the separation process).
TUGAAX
CONFIDENTIAL
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