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(e) He thought that it was quite clear that
(£)
all the persons would be in transit but seemed to avoid saying that they would without any exception go on to some other Portuguese territory.
He was sure that the Portuguese authorities would accept financial responsibility for transporting the civilians to Hong Kong. And he supposed that they would use existing means of transport so far as possible. But his understanding of the request which he had been instructed to make was that it definitely covered co-operation by the Hong Kong authorities in providing transport from Macau to Hong Kong if this was necessary, as he believed it well might be, especially if evacuation had to be carried out under emergency conditions.
2. The Ambassador undertook to see what further information he could obtain from Lisbon in answer to our questions. We had the impression that the Ambassador did not expect his government to react with pleasure to our battery of questions. He had, we think, been hoping to be able to tell his government immediately that in principle we would be willing to provide facilities at Hong Kong for the evacuation of civilians from Macau. But he accepted that his government's request was one which required careful study, that it would have to be put to Ministers, and that the more information we had about what would be involved the better. He was pleased to hear that the authorities in Hong Kong were already studying practical aspects of the problem, without prejudice to a decision on the principle, and that departments concerned here were treating the Portuguese request as a matter of urgency.
30 The Ambassador called today (16th) to give further information he had received from Lisbon.
4。 As regards our general inquiry about the negotiations with the Chinese, the Ambassador said that his Government were obviously unable to summarise for us all the developments and talks which had taken place over the last six weeks. But they could summarise the present situation by saying that the difficulty now arose from Chinese insistence on the Portuguese Government publicly accepting the Chinese account of the incidents which had taken place. This account embodied humiliating formulae and placed the exclusive responsibility for what had happened on the Portuguese Government.
56 The Ambassador explained that so far as the claims and requests advanced by the Chinese were concerned, some of which were well-founded, the Portuguese Government saw no difficulty. They could accept the substance of these. But the formulae proposed by the Chinese were incompatible with the dignity of the Portuguese nation and could not be accepted.
6. The Portuguese Government believe that H.M. Government would realise that it must be for the former to judge when they should initiate the use of the facilities which they had requested.
7. The Ambassador said that he was now informed that the numbers of people involved would not be excessive. The Portuguese Government could not make a precise estimate, but they thought it most likely that only a few hundred persons would be involved. (The Ambassador subsequently referred to a possible upper limit of a thousand or two see below.) The Portuguese Government would accept the whole financial responsibility with regard to these people and accepted responsibility for arranging their onward transport from Hong Kong.
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