LETTER FROM SIR PATRICK NAIRNE TO MR GALSWORTHY, DATED 27 AUGUST
Dear Tony
As I
Your thoughts are concentrated on the disucssisons in Peking. (lucky fellow) tramp across the Nort Yorkshire Moors, my thoughts keep coming back to the subsequent task in Hong Kong. I fully recognize that I am only of two Monitors, and that my colleague knows more of Hing Kong than I can every hope to know; and also that I am exploring questions about our approach to the Monitoring task before my serious briefing has taken place. But, notwithstanding these reservations, it may be useful to put something on paper before we meet on 6th September. muich in mind that the FCO and Westminster will be the fudges of the
success of my own assignment.
I have very
There are, I think, three fairly distinct parts to the task of "testing the acceptability in Hong Kong of an Agreement with the
Chinese Government":-
(1) The scope, character, and organisation of the consultation; (2) The discharge or implementation of the consultation;
(3) The collation, summarising, analysis and assessment of the
response.
The Assessment Office task if confirmed to (3) clearly an
essential form of mechanism and function in the absence of a
head-counting referendum but its ultimate responsibility for providing an "overall assessment of the extent of acceptance by the people of Hong Kong of the draft Agreement" will crucially depend on (1) and (2) above. The Monitoring Team will be, in effect, in the
same position with its formal responsibilities confirmed to "observing the work of the Assessment Office", and reporting whether the Assessment Office has "properly, accurately and impartially discharged its duties", though "free to witness such aspects of the exercise of consultations" as it may wish. An exacting enough
assignment in itself.
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May it not be, however, that Ministers of Parliament, at the beginning of December, will be as much concerned about the proper
and effective carrying out of the consultation process as a whole as