・
SWB
FE/8461/A3/1
9 Jan 87
Масия
end,c
3. FAR EASTERN RELATIONS
Macao to be Handed Over "Sometime in 1999"
Lisbon in Portuguese for abroad 0700 gmt 7 Jan 87
Excerpts from report (FE/8460/i):
A meeting of the Council of State, called by the President of the Republic to discuss the question of Macao, ended last night at about 2130 (6th January, local time], after being in session for four and half hours. Pedro Cid takes up the story:
[Pedro Cid voice] Before proceeding with details - and I have some - I must put on record that the communique issued at the end of the meeting was longer than the usually laconic way in which meetings of the Council of State have hitherto been summed up. Even so no mention is made of the specific matters which are known to have been broached at the Tuesday meeting, as can be seen from the communique read out by Dr. Joaquim Brandao, the Secretary to the Council of State...
The communique enables one to learnt that there exist only minutes of the talks held between Portugal and China about Macao but that they basically amount to a political accord between the two sides. Also important is the Council's reminder in the communique that Macao is not a Portuguese but a Portuguese-administered territory.
Cavaco Silva told the Council that he had in his possession, there at the meeting, a document signed by the late Mota Pinto, who was the Prime Minister in the then fourth constitutional govenrment, proposing four amendments to the original text of the minutes of the talks about Macão. The Chinese had accepted three and rejected one of them. The Council was not told which of the proposals was rejected...
Barbosa de Melo and Amandio de Azevedo were the only state councillors who argued that the minutes were not legally an accord but the rest of the Councillors viewed the minutes as a record of the political will expressed by the two sides...
In these minutes, Portugal, among other things, expressly recognised that the island of Taiwan is Chinese territory...
Through the voice of Cavaco Silva, the Government revealed the global issues which dominate the negotiations on the Portuguese side, that is to say, the position of the Portuguese residents in Macao, including the crucial question of dual nationality for which, as the Council of State meeting was told, there is no provision in the laws of the PRC...
Given China's stand on the date of the transfer of the territory's administration, the Portuguese government will not now (?wrangle) over this issue. The Council was told that the original position will prevail: That is, to hand over the administration after Hongkong's return to China in 1997. Although the actual day and the month have yet to be agreed, one can now say that the transfer of Macao's administration to China will take place sometime in 1999.
The Councillors endorsed the overall guidelines of the Government's policy and although the meeting was lengthy and exhaustive, it was not marked by major controversies...
(
22 Nov 1973 to Yune 1974