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reserve to deploy after the next round of talks if it then looks that a visit by him to Peking would be useful. The Secretary of State's view (Bucharest telno 293) is that it is too early now to judge whether there is a good chance that a visit by him to Peking in early July would be useful. He is inclined to wait until after the next round of talks before making any approach to the Chinese side.
4. Before seeing the Secretary of State's telegram, we had reached the same conclusion. For the reasons set out in the telegram to the Governor, we consider that a conditional offer of a visit to Peking by the Secretary of State would probably not give us useful leverage with the Chinese, and would leave us with a very difficult decision if, the next round of talks failed to make progress.
5.
We therefore prefer Sir R McLaren's idea of a private message before the next round of talks hinting to the Chinese as clearly as we are able to do that if they give us their views on all the main issues, we will be willing to bargain seriously for a mutually acceptable settlement. The discussion in ExCo on 1 June of possible areas of compromise should (if it gets back to the Chinese, eg via C H Tung) reassure them that there are real benefits for them in store provided that the talks reach the point of serious bargaining. We believe that such a message would need to be passed on one of the Hong Kong channels, but it would probably be best not to pass it purely in the name of the Governor, given the adverse reaction which his imprimatur still produces in Peking. We propose that the message should contain one new element, by suggesting that there should be
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