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during his visit to Australia the previous year, that we did not expect
to remain in Singapore beyond the middle 1970s. The most difficult
problem in the forthcoming consultations with our allies would be to
ensure that, as the Cabinet had decided, the possibility of withdrawing
altogether from the Far East without maintaining even a small maritime and air presence there was kept open for decision in June/July. Although
our allies might well be willing to see us reduce the size of our deployment in the Far East, they attached importance to our maintaining a
presence of some kind and particularly to our not saying publicly that we intended to withdraw completely. The best way of presenting our
proposals to them in order to retain our room for manoeuvre might be to
emphasise for presentational purposes our plans up to 1970-71, dealing
with the years beyond solely as a projection of these; some unattributable
briefing of the press on these lines might be undertaken in the hope of
preventing damaging publicity. The issues of policy involved in the Far
East were of crucial importance to the defence programme as a whole.
Firm guidance on the assumptions to be taken about our Far Eastern policy was
essential in time to carry out the detailed consequential work would be
required before announcements could be made in July about the future size
and shape of our forces.
THE COMMONWEALTH SECRETARY said that he was in agreement with the
report by officials, and particularly with the emphasis that it placed
on the importance of ensuring stability in Singapore, of granting
substantial aid and of ocnsultations with cur allies; so far as they were concerned the problem did not arise from the faster rundown that we now
had in mind in the short term, but from the fact that we were to withdraw wholly from Singapore/Malaysia by 1975-76. Although he had earlier
thought that it would be right, at the time of the consultations during the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) Council meeting, for the
Prime Minister to send a message about our plans to the Australian Prime Minister (Mr. Holt), this should not be decided until later since
it would not be clear until the Foreign Secretary had initiated the consultations whether it would be necessary to send a message and if so
how far we should need to go in stating our intentions.
In discussion it was argued that our aim should be to withdraw wholly
from the Far East as soon as possible and that the forthcoming initial
consultations with our allies should be conducted in a manner which would
facilitate that aim. It was urged on this view that only if we were to declare our total withdrawal by a given date would it be possible for us
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