CODE 18,77
に
Mr Hoare HK&GD
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HKCK 361 || A8301
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notel Plus
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ак Гараво
COMPULSORY ACQUISITION OF LAND IN THE KOWLOON WALLED CITY
Attached.
See 19
1. Your note of 29 July comes to me on the eve of my departure on leave, and I can only give you my first thoughts. They are -
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
§
Mr Margolis' letter of 23 July may be a compressed account of the legal arguments. But as expressed in that letter points (a) and (b) do seem to me to confuse to some extent the position in international law with that in domestic law.
16
In international law the UK does not in my view have territorial sovereignty over the New Territories. Territorial sovereignty resides with China and the United Kingdom has an international lease. Through the 1898 Convention and its long established application we have the right, during the lease, to act as if we were the sovereign in many, probably most, but not all respects. For example I do not myself believe that we would have the right to cede the New Territories to a third state. either in perpetuity or for the residue of the lease.
How far we are entitled in international law to behave like a territorial sovereign in order to regulate land holding in the Walled City is not an easy question to answer on the basis of the material in this file. It involves the question whether the provisions of the 1898 Convention about the city of Kowloon (which, as is explained in the enclosure HA 361/2 to the letter of 31 December 1981, has become known
1981
(iv)
as the Kowloon Walled City) still apply, or have in some way or other been abrogated; and if they still apply, what they mean. Much ink has already been spilt on the latter question. See for example pages 179-182 of the Hong Kong Law Journal (1982).
In relation to point (iii), and also as background briefing for the forthcoming negotiations, I should like to see if possible a detailed map of Hong Kong showing not only the boundary of the New Territories as fixed in 1898 but also the position of the City of Kowloon at that date. In particular it would be interesting to see what boundary was agreed between the New Territories and the tip of the Kowloon peninsula which had already been ceded.
Did the
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