RESTRICTED 76 Patrick Wright Esg Middle East Department Foreign and Commonwealth Office MID 223/03 10 July 1972 TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES 174) Thank you for your letter NBT 5/1 of 3 July. 2. We shall now have to surrender to our Finance Department the £200,000 allocated to us for a grant-in-aid payment to the UAE this year, I shall certainly try to turn this surrender to my advantage - at least to the extent of obtaining a little credit which may predispose our financial masters in our favour when it comes to putting in a bid for capital aid for Oman and the Yemen Arab Republic. On these, as you know, we are waiting to receive the recommendations of John Rowley and the Heads of Missions concerned. 3. I eno lose a draft letter which I would propose to send in reply to Julian Walker's letter of 27 June. As you will see, it goes on to deal with e question which was in fact raised by Ronald Belcher on the Abu Dhabi despatch of 11 lay. I think that the reaction which I have given in the draft reply is in line with your general thinking on policy towards the UAE but I should be glad to have any comments you might like to offer. Could I take this occasion to make a general point to you arising out of the Abu Dhabi despatch which we have just seen in print? This is that it would be most helpful to us (and also save some embarrassment) if your desk officers could make a point of copying to us, and also to John Rowley, despatches of a general political economic interest but, of course, more particularly when they contain references to aid work. Ye had another example of this the other day when I received enquiries both from our Private office and from the Permanent Secretary regarding Alec Stirling's valedictory despatch from Bahrain which was circulated in print and which we had not previously seen, ܕܛܬ W N Hillier-Fzy RESTRICTED
