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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
FKK040/1
London SW1A 2AH
From the Secretary of State
22 MAR 1983
Dear David,
STACK
21 March, 1983
194
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Thank you for your letter of 9 March about Hong Kong.
Perhaps I could take your points in reverse order.
As you know, meetings in Peking through diplomatic channels
have been going on since last autumn. These are continuing. For obvious reasons we have agreed with the Chinese that
their content should remain confidential. However the Prime
Minister and I are well aware of the interest shown by
members of the House in Hong Kong's future. I certainly do
not rule out occasional statements but since no timetable
has been set for the talks I cannot say anything very
helpful about when one might be appropriate.
On the involvement of the Hong Kong people, I agree that the people of Hong Kong must have confidence in the negotiating process and that their views and wishes must
be reflected in our approach to the negotiations. When she
was in Hong Kong, the Prime Minister made this quite clear and stressed how much importance we attach to the views of
the people there. For the moment no new machinery for
consulting them has been established because we believe that
the existing channels of communication work well already. The most important is the Executive Council who play a key role. Following the Prime Minister's consultations
The Rt Hon Dr David Owen MP
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