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MR. CHEONG:
Sir, I'm grateful for the opportunity (Laughter) To illustrate this point
to pause for a moment. further, it is perhaps fitting to be made known that an urgent late afternoon meeting of the ad hoc group was called specifically to discuss the legal opinions of both FCO, and Mr. Barendt
ad hoc group were very concerned that there would have been
As the meeting was long
as soon as they were received, because all the members of the
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any contravention whatsoever of the covenant which is enshrined in the Joint Declaration.
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24.
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and technical it would not serve any useful purpose to go into details of the discussions now, but what is important is that there seems to be a concensus of understanding reached at least amongst the majority of non-lawyer members of the group, and the concensus is that the two seemingly different legal opinions represent different angles of emphasis and different approaches in the intepretation of the new regulations vis-a-vis the violation or otherwise of the international covenant.
No clear cut case, sir,
has been or can be established beyond doubt as to which approach is the only right approach.
Under that circumstances
issue we can only be and what is not in the
Sir, as I mentioned
in having to exercise judgement on this guided by our own perception of what is best interests of Hong Kong as a whole. before, the question of whether the interim measures or indeed the new regulations if adopted would contravene the provisions of the international covenant seems to me to be no more than a tool deployed to consolidate, or perhaps even
to propagate one's own distrust of the post-1997 administration. This approach, in my view, is not in the best interests for 30 Hong Kong's future. Too deep seated a distrust could easily
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lead to unwarranted imaginations and suspicions which in turn would create unnecessary barriers to smooth solutions of any future differences of opinion between Hong Kong and the sovereign 34 state. No one would deny that in the post-1997 era of Hong Kong
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there will be differences of opinion over many issues between Hong Kong and the central authority of the sovereign state.