HC Deb 08 February 1994 vol 237 c124W
Mr. Alan Williams

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether the protocol agreed in March 1988 between the then Secretary of State for Defence and the Government of Malaysia contained figures relating amounts or percentages of civil aid to amounts of arms purchases.

Mr. Goodlad

Yes. But as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs made clear in his reply to the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) on 25 January, at column145–46, the Secretary of State for Defence, after consultation with ministerial colleagues in London, wrote to the Malaysian Minister of Finance in June 1988 to say that aid could not be linked to defence sales. As a result, the issue was not taken up in the memorandum of understanding on defence procurement signed in September that year.

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