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6.
I believe that this would register our position without being seen
by the Germans as confrontational. We have good reasons not to introduce
new irritants into the bilateral relationship soon after our row over
Iran and at a time when we need German support on GATT and other major
issues. For this reason, I recommend against taking any initiative to
brief the press on this issue.
7. Depending on the outcome of the Secretary of State's conversation
with Kinkel, we would need to consider how to handle all this at the Anglo-German Summit. The subject of China/Hong Kong is already on the agenda. I hope that we could make the discussion forward-looking, ie focus on how to persuade the Germans to be more robust with the Chinese
over Hong Kong.
8. The second aspect is the EC one. As Peking telno 1497 points out,
the Political Committee endorsed the maintenance of sanctions on 15/16
June this year after a Spanish and Italian attempt to have them lifted. We (and the Germans) supported the EC ban then, and I recommend that we
continue to do so, for both the Hong Kong and human rights reasons suggested above, and because if the ban were lifted, Heads of State meetings could be used by our European competitors to advance their commercial interests in China to our disadvantage.
9. The Political Committee is meeting in Brussels on 25/26 November. Subject to the outcome of the Secretary of State/Kinkel conversation suggested above, I think this provides a good opportunity for EC partners to ask for a German explanation. Our aims might be to draw attention to
the German breach of an agreed position, to have the sanctions endorsed yet again, and to encourage the Germans to say that the proposed visit by President Jiang will not take place before an EC consensus to lift the
ban on Heads of State contacts. I recommend that we try to stimulate one
of our partners to raise this rather than Mr Appleyard's raising it directly. One of them may well raise it anyway. But we could ask the
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