CAB148-30-Defence and Oversea Policy Committee Meetings Relating to 1967 Disturbances-1967 — Page 66

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THE DEFENCE SECRETARY said that, while he was reluctant to accept

that we should negotiate with Dr. Olivier while the measures against our

forces continued, on balance he agreed that it would be wrong to

frustrate the negotiations on this account. The measures against our

forces did not involve any personal harassment of individuals, and did

not turn on the payment of duty, but rather on physical access to and from the island; for example, a transport vessel full of vehicles could not be unloaded at Malta, and a tanker of fuel was at Gibraltar awaiting

clearance to transport its cargo to Malta. This inconvenience could be

endured for one or two weeks, and there were methods of eking out our supplies of fuel in Malta (e.g. it would be possible, in the last resort,

to fly aircraft out, using available stocks of fuel, and base then in Libya for the time being). A crucial date was 10th March, by which time

our normal reserves of fuel for vehicles would have run out, and we should

have no alternative but to begin to use our operational reserve. This

would be highly undesirable. Negotiations under the duress of the

measures should therefore not be allowed to drag on. Guidance to the

Als Press should not play down too much the inconvenience to use of the

Maltese measures.

make

In discussion some members of the Committee expressed doubt whether,

instead of agreeing to negotiations with Dr. Olivier while the measures

against our troops continued, we should not rather make their cessation a precondition for the negotiations. Contingency planning existed for a

withdrawal under emergency conditions within about ten days, though this

would involve leaving behind valuable stores as a gift to the Maltese.

To accept that the measures should continue during the negotiations would

not only nake our public position difficult to justify; it would put us

at a disadvantage in the negotiations, with a risk that we should be

pushed by Dr. Olivier to get further concessions. Other members of the

Committee took the view that, distasteful though it was, to accept the

continuance of the measures was better than to jeopardise the chance of

an agreed settlement over the defence run-down and run the risk of the

serious consequences of a break both for this country and for Malta.

We could take some comfort from the fact that Dr. Olivier had made one

gesture in suspending the legislation to amend the Visiting Forces Act.

If we went ahead with negotiations and they nevertheloss ended in

failure, our public position would be stronger if we could demonstrate

the extent of the various concessions we had made, or had been prepared

to make.

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