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11 but
legal, as well as political, query. Their opinion was based on experience of common or statutory law, rather than on international law but, since the legal advisers of investment companies would probably have a similar background, their point of view obviously has to be given serious weight. There is the additional argument that the validity of leases beyond 1997 can only be put beyond doubt if it is also made clear that the Governor has power of administration beyond that date.
The issue of new leases from now on for a period of, say, 75 or 20 years, and an announcement that all future New Territories leases would be for the same period, would still leave open the problem of what to do about the thousands of existing leases which are due to terminate in 1997. Something has to be done about these.
There nothas relevent
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(convert then to lenses of the same sort)
When we looked at this earlier we thought the Chinese would be likely to object to the presumption of issuing leases for a fixed term well beyond 1997 (Quantrill's 4(b)). Had leases always been issued in this form in the New Territories, as they are for instance on Hong Kong Island, there would probably be no
difficulty. But this is not the case. Wel tone: but we have
would be making a new, and dramatic, move. I still believe that it is one which the Chinese would find very hard to swallow.
Finally, Bill Quantrill's scheme fails to meet our real objective. This is to remove
all the legal impediments on the British side to the Chinese allowing present arrangements to drift on beyond 1997 if this is what they wish.
I hope you and Bill Quantrill will find these comments helpful.
to do this one way or another anyway
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(D C Wilson)
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