CAB148-30-Defence and Oversea Policy Committee Meetings Relating to 1967 Disturbances-1967 — Page 23

CONFIDENTIAL

1. CONSULAR CONVENTIONS WITH POLAND AND BULGARIA.

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CONFIDENTIAL

The Committee had before them a memorandum by the Foreign Secretary (OPD(67) 4) about the scale of immunity from legal process to be

accorded in Consular Conventions shortly to be concluded with Poland and

Bulgaria and in Conventions in course of negotiation with other Eastern

European countries.

THE FOREIGN SECRETARY said that negotiations for Consular

Conventions with Poland and Bulgaria were well advanced; he hoped to

sign the Polish Convention during the visit of the Polish Minister of

Foreign Affairs, Mr. Rapacki, later in February, and the Convention with Bulgaria before the tourist season opened. Negotiations for

similar Conventions with Rumania, Hungaria and Czechoslovakia were also

in hand, and for the purpose of these negotiations, as well as the

Anglo-Polish and Anglo-Bulgarian Conventions, it was necessary to

establish a policy for the scale of immunity from legal process.

Ministers had already recognised, in relation to the Anglo-Soviet Consular Convention (OPD(65) 29 and 38; 7th Meeting, Minute 1 and 10th Meeting, Minute 1), a need for scales of immunity in the Soviet

Union more generous than those embodied in the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Cmnd 2113), if consular staff in provincial posts were to receive adequate protection. These considerations applied

equally to other Eastern European countries. Consular officers in a

capital city benefited from the protection afforded by the Embassy;

but those in other posts could in the countries in question be subjected

to considerable pressure by means of local legal and administrative

procedures if they did not have protection in the shape of full immunity

from legal process, and not the immunity limited to official acts which

was normal for consular officers. Only by concluding Conventions

providing for immunity on a wider scale should we obtain the full benefit, in terms of both trade and tourism, from maintaining consular posts in

Eastern European countries. A secondary advantage of concluding Consular Conventions with these countries was that our right to be notified in the case of arrest of a United Kingdom national, and to have access to detained nationals, would become much more clearly established. He therefore sought the Committee's approval for the

conclusion of Consular Conventions extending immunity to consular staff,

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