TNAG-2915-FCO40-4190-International-support-from-European-countries-regarding-the--1993 — Page 6

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From: J T Masefield

Date: 30 April 1993

(35)

John Wile

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Cc: Mr Hum

Sir J Coles

1 2 MAY 1993

44 James Janes

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GERMAN

1215.

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ASIA: ANG10-GERMAN TALKS;

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1. Mr Hum and I invited Dr Klaus Zeller over to London for talks on 19 April. We were joined by Mr Hewitt and Mr Smith, and other members of SEAD and SAD, and by Mr Davies, FED over lunch. Mrs Kinoshita and Mrs Swift co-ordinated the record-taking, and I attach a copy of it. We passed on your regrets at missing Dr Zeller on this occasion.

2.

For me, the main impressions of our talks were as follows:

(a) Although Dr Zeller shared our wish to get the Americans moving on normalisation of their relations with Vietnam, he was very clear that Germany would do nothing that would risk embarrassing or isolating the Americans at the IMF meeting.

(b)

Dr Zeller was concerned about the arrangements for the protection and possible evacuation of the polling station officers (IPSOS) in Cambodia. We agreed to pass on to Mr Burns in Phnom Penh Dr Zeller's wish that we and the Germans should share information about our plans to help the IPSOS and other civilian volunteers if there were to be difficult times and an evacuation.

(c) In our brief discussion about regional security, Dr Zeller seemed to me surprisingly relaxed about the threat of trouble over the rival claims in the Spratlys and in general about the risk of the Chinese wishing to flex their growing military might.

(a) Our discussion on regional security quickly degenerated into shared complaints about the way in which the Portuguese obsession with East Timor had delayed the development of appropriate relations between EC and ASEAN. Dr Zeller was all for doing something with the Portuguese to show how cross we were, but conceded that in practice there were other considerations, primarily European, that would override the irritation of Asian experts.

(e) Dr Zeller put much weight on EC/US relations themselves, but suggested that we should talk about politics rather than security as such. He thought that the ASEAN countries might be interested in European experience and he clearly did not envisage getting involved in any sort of security framework.

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