CATAMP ( 2 )
MACAU
- poter diegimas – wikirjaa viliansen, imparts on agardalshreya en tornaram a 12, 1 kama m
CONFIDENTIAL
TALKS WITH PORTUGUESE POLITICAL DIRECTOR:
31 MARCH
Background
SINO-PORTUGUESE NEGOTIATIONS
1.
future
agreement
of
has been
It
the June 1986 Portugal and China began negotiations on
Macau. After four formal rounds of talks, a draft
reached.
was initialled in Peking
on
26
March: we do not yet know its content.
2.
We know little of what has passed between the two sides in course the case of, the negotiations, but both have told us separately that the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong is the model for the agreement. (Indeed, as in the Joint Declaration, a 50 year transitional period has been agreed upon during which Macau's capitalist system will be retained.) The Chinese seem to have taken this for granted from the outset, thereby initially causing some offence to Portuguese pride. For their part the Portuguese approach to the negotiations seems have been ill-prepared and with no coherent policy or objectives.
3.
have been:
to
It is clear that the difficult points in the negotiations
(a)
Handover
The
date: The
The century. twenty-first
it should be principle that
no later
century.
two sides have settled on 20 December 1999,
after the apparently
President Portuguese
accommodate Chinese wishes.
Portuguese wanted a date early in
the
Chinese made
than
it a
of point
the turn of the
decided to
(b)
Nationality: Some 85,000 Macanese might be entitled to Portuguese nationality and Portugal wished them to be able to retain their nationality after Macau is restored to China. But the Chinese consider all ethnic Chinese Macanese to
nationals, and have always been
been firmly opposed to
Chinese
be
CONFIDENTIAL