E.
HONG KONG: PASSPORTS
Passport Department letter of 11 January; Hong Kong Telegram no 338 of 13 February; Peking Telegram no 199 of 15 February.
Note produced for discussion at meeting with FCO on 27 February.
Issuing Policy
It is agreed that there can be no question of issuing individuals with more than one passport.
Those who apply for a passport recording BDTC status can be issued one where eligible, limited in validity to 30 June 1997. It is for Hong Kong to determine cut off date for persons eventually wishing to trade in the BDTC passport for one recording BNO status.
Hong Kong's judgement that issuing passports with dual endorsement as to status could be confusing in third countries is accepted. There is therefore, no objection to their aiming to issue passports recording BN(0) status to be valid, subject to the normal 10 year period for renewal, either side of 1 July 1997.
Passport Format
Hong Kong along with other Dependent Territories, is being consulted through Nationality and Treaty Department (NTD) on påssport format generally, in line with our intention to introduce the common format/ machine readable (cfp/mrp) passport. As things stand, the discretion lies with Hong Kong they could retain the traditional hard blue - but they are disposed to adopt a cfp/mrp look-a-like which we favour.
M
Hong Kong suggest that if the passport recording BN (0) status is to be acceptable to the Chinese beyond June 1997, then the reference to the "Governor of Hong Kong" in the rubric has to be replaced by
If this is "Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State". acceptable to the FCO (NTD) it is presumed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary would have to nominate the Governor to
This leaves act as his agent for the issue of BN(0) passports. open the question whether the Governor should similarly be regarded as agent for the issue of BDTC passports which will cease to be valid beyond June 1997.
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