CONFIDENTIAL
061153
MDLOAN 574
was no need for Spanish concern that illegal immigrants from China might seep into Europe from Hong Kong. Cebrian
acknowledged that well established commercial Links existed between Spain and Hong Kong. Hong Kong visitors were welcome they just needed a visa first.
COMMENT
4.
Subject to your views, it looks as if Spain has a political problem over imposing a visa regime on Venezuela, and has decided to make this more palatable for imposing the same regime on a number of other territories as well, using Schengen as a pretext.
5. Against that background, the chances of the Spaniards agreeing to back down on Hong Kong are presumably slim. We see little point in inviting Carbajal to London. Subject to your views, we nevertheless consider that you should follow up with Villar as envisaged in TUR. We can then consider whether to raise the issue to Ministerial level.
6. FOR UKREP BRUSSELS. We would welcome advice on whether it would be worth taking soundings informally with the Schengen Secretariat, to see whether we could elicit something from them which would confirm that the Spaniards do not have any obligations under Schengen to act as they are doing. This may be a non-starter, but it might just give us more ammunition for use in Madrid.
7.
FOR HONG KONG. Your telno 1481. For what it is worth, we detected no suggestion of any link to Gibraltar in the Spaniards' Latest presentation. We hope that LegCo can be ridden off the notion of retaliation which would almost certainly prove counter productive.
HURD
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CONFIDENTIAL
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