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PHILIP BOWRING, Far East Economic Review:
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Prime Minister,
did your talks in Peking actually progress beyond making known positions on sovreignty and on the inviolability of the Treaties? Did they progress to discussing the sort of, some of the measures that might be necessary to achieve the stability and prosperity to which both sides say is their prime objective?
P.M.
Well,they want further than you suggest with all due respect, you can see that even in the communique. He agreed to enter into talks, and we would hardly have agreed to enter into talks if we weren't aware of the complexity of the problem in some detail, and we have a common aim in entering into those talks, so they're both very considerable advances above respective differences, very considerablet Respective differences yes, entering into talks is new, with a common aim, a common purpose, that is new and because we're aware of very much detail, obviously we couldn't go into the detail, As I said, an hour and a quarter isn't,in effect taking up interpreting time with Chairman
We of course, Deng, you can't enter into that amount of detail. are much more familiar with the details because we've handled it
for longer.
ROBERT COTTRELL, Financial Times: Shortly before you left London, you received a delegation from Hong Kong led by the Governor and including members of the Executive and Legislative Councils: could you highlight the points at which the views expressed by that delegation modified or clarified your own views on the necessary steps towards a satisfactory resolution of Hong Kong's future?
P.M.
I think that we all understood the need to enter into talks and as a result of going to Peking, we are entering into talks. Now of course, while I'm here, I'm seeing a far wider group of people and trying to understand as far as I I may say can the wishes and views of the people of Hong Kong,
so that many of you will know, I do also make a practice of seein quite a lot of the Hong Kong papers over this period for obvious
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