1147
CONFIDENTIAL
17 December 1992
BY FAX
012/2
と
p.a. Constit Dept
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
London SWI 2AH
Ми взятий fi fest dy fax
Mide Sander oh
William Ehrman Esq Political Adviser HONG KONG
Den willow
VIEWS OF PETER WOO
1. Peter Woo asked me to stop off and see him on my way to the airport last night. He interrupted a dinner party to talk to
me.
2. After all this, he did not have anything very pressing to say. He lamented the difficulties he encountered when he went to do business in Peking. We had to find a way of resolving the impasse. If it dragged on, it would do real damage to
Hong Kong's economy.
3.
His main point was that there was no
no one body which could broker a solution. We and the Governor, for reasons he understood, saw LegCo as the body which had the responsibility for making final decisions. But the Chinese did not recognise LegCo. So some other body was needed as a link between LegCo and Peking. He thought that the One Country - Two Systems Institute could play that role. T.K. Ann had good political contacts in Peking. Why shouldn't a group of LegCo members work out a compromise proposal in private, then put it to the Institute, who would broker it with Peking before anything was tabled in LegCo? I asked what would happen if Peking replied that the compromise would not do so. Woo said that LegCo would then have to think again. I asked him whether LegCo members would be able to come up with proposals which would bridge the differences between them. Woo said that LegCo members could come up with proposals which would bridge the differences between them. He said he did not know, but was encouraging them to try.
The key point is that two-step process would be needed to clear lines in Peking.
p.woo.PET.JRB
CONFIDENTIAL