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2. As far as the ILO is concerned you will see that we do not in principle object to Hong Kong participating directly in the Asian Regional Conference. We are satisfied that such participation would not imply that Hong Kong had status as a member of the ILO. On a wider ILO issue, we understand from the discussions which our International Labour Adviser had with Darwen Chen in Geneva in June that we can soon expect agreement to enable Hong Kong to send its own tripartite delegation to next year's ILO Conference in the same way that Bermuda has Observer status now. Our initial view is that such a proposal should not cause
cause any difficulty provided, again, that it did not convey any impression of separate membership of the ILO for Hong Kong.
3. It is for consideration whether we need say anything. to the Chinese about the attendance of tripartite delegations from Hong Kong. My own view is that this is probably unnecessary since such attendance at the two conferences will not involve any change of status for Hong Kong in the ILO. We have however suggested (para 4
of our telno 1195) how we might deal with this aspect in the context of the Asian Regional Conference. We need to consider whether a similar approach would be appropriate in respect of the 1986 Conference.
4. We have also given some very initial thought to Hong Kong's longterm future in the ILO. Article 1 of the constitution of the ILO makes it clear that membership of the Organisation is limited to states. The PRC is a member of the ILO. By the terms of Section 11 of Annex I
it would therefore appear that after 1997 Hong Kong's representatives can expect to participate as members of the Chinese delegation and may express their views in the name of "Hong Kong, China". This of course as sumes that there is no possibility of amending the ILO constitution to allow for membership of non-states. We think that
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