Boggle!
Are me Se noush going to ash the chmeze to amend the Bane how ???
scheme, we were unable to persuade them to delete these provisions. They took more account of our views in some
other areas, and of course we were eventually able to
reach a compromise on increasing the number of directly
elected members of LegCo. In that general context, I
think it was right to decide not to launch a public
confrontation then on the nationality restrictions.
سم
Nonetheless, I am very much aware that this is an
important piece of unfinished business, which we must pursue with the Chinese when the time is right.I
In
preparing for my visit to Peking, we carefully considered whether I should take up personally with Li Peng both this question and the pace of democratisation. We concluded that it would be premature to do so, and that
raising these issues now would be likely to provoke a
negative reaction which it might take years to overcome.
Instead, I therefore put down a general marker, telling
him in our talks that Britain and China would need to
discuss arrangements for the 1995 elections including relevat provisions of the Basic Law. I hope, that as a
me morandum result of the airport agreement and the new arrangements we have now set up, this eventual discussion will take
place in a better atmosphere than we have known over the
past couple of years. But I cannot yet predict its outcome. We shall keep the question of when and how we
pursue this under close review: and we shall always value your own views on this.
K
Finally let me again reaffirm my own commitment to
the Joint Declaration and to international law
generally. When I wrote to Li Peng in June, during the
airport negotiations, I did not mince my words in telling him that what the Chinese were then demanding went beyond
the Joint Declaration. I am glad that the Chinese then
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