CONFIDENTIAL
CO Hum Esq
Our Reference NTY/87 1/387/8
28 April 1986
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I was glad to see that you have been giving further consideration to what we say about our continuing contacts with the Chinese about the ethnic minorities. As you know, at your suggestion, we invited the Home Secretary to tell Mr Sital that we expected in future to have further discussions with the Chinese Government. We shall need to be ready to expand on that in the Parliamentary debates and to give some idea of the time-scale in which we propose to hold these talks, and what we hope to get out of them. We shall be discussing with you appropriate forms of words.
I rather doubt whether we should at this stage give any undertaking to go to other Governments. There is, of course, an argument that India and the many other countries involved should recognize as their nationals people who might after 1997 risk statelessness. But we know already that the Indian Government is extremely resistant to such suggestions. It would in my judgement be unwise to give any public undertaking now that we are going to follow this up with them or others; and it might suggest that we are less confident than we claim about the value of the statelessness provisions which we have provided for our British Dependent Territories citizens in Hong Kong.
If you agree, I think the next steps are for us to pursue Lord MacLehose's suggestion for a Peers' briefing; and to concentrate on drafting the Government speeches for the Commons and the Lords debates. A good deal will depend on getting the tone of those speeches right given the very varying audiences for which they are intended, and we would welcome your help on this. We shall therefore be ✔ letting you have a first draft of the Commons speech within the next few days. At
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the same time, we shall be reviewing the background and briefing material which we prepared for the January debates and will be discussing with you what further material might be needed.
I am copying this letter to Wilfred Hyde.
Your ever,
Zohn Lyn
J M LYON
Head of Nationality Division
CONMDENTIAL