From............
CONFIDENTIAL
Director of Immigration
Ref. (35) in IMM/CR 17/800 Pt 2
MEMO
To
Secretary for Security (Attn: Mrs Lessie Wei)
Tel. No.
3-7328205
Date.....
17 July 1989
Your Ref..
in Destroy after
dated
Register Moti
Roceived...in....Racistry.......
19 JULY
Dask Officer
INDEX
24
Luso-Chinese JLG
PRIORITY
(23
2
NON
but it and
I am writing to report - I must confess not without alacrity that the next Luso-Chinese JLG will not take place on the 31st of this month as reported in the local media.
2.
You will recall that the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr Cavaco Silva, at the meeting of the EEC Commission in Madrid did not wish "Macau" to be mentioned together with "Hong Kong" in the final communique, which, inter alia, stated that "The Twelve were all too conscious of the recent events that caused profound concern in Hong Kong". He explained that whilst Hong Kong remained a sovereign territory of the British Crown until 1997, Macau was a Chinese territory, which his government administered.
3.
Considerable pressure was put by fellow members of the Commission on Mr Cavaco Silva not to delete the reference to Macau but he did not yield to it.
4.
From this weekend's Macau weeklies my under- standing of events that have happened recently is as follows:
(a) The Macau Government passed a law to dissolve
the IEM (Instituicao Emissora de Macau) the statutory organ of the government responsible for issuing "patacas", and to authorize the government to assign the task to any other organisation it chose.
(b)
The Chinese authorities were upset as it became obvious that the Macau government intended to assign the task to the Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) and on 30 June i.e. the day before the contract was to be signed between the BNU and the Macau government, the Chinese ambassador in Lisbon sent a protest note to the Portuguese MFA which stated that the Portuguese had breached the Luso-Chinese JD. At the same time, the Chinese JLG delegation in Macau met with the acting Governor (Mr Melancia had not yet returned from Lisbon)
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