THIS IS A COPY
THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN CLOSED UNDER
FOI EXEMPTION NO... 27(1)
designed to meet the concerns set out in your letter of 27 May and in
our talk of 2 July.
To deal first with the airport. Here I am addressing John Cole's
argument that publication of detailed negotiating exchanges over the
airport in 1991 might cause the Chinese to fear similar revelations
from current negotiations and thereby make them less ready to
negotiate over the airport now.
I must repeat that I do not find this argument peruasive. The
Chinese will decide whether to negotiate and whether to conclude
agreements or break off negotiations on a hard calculation of their
national interests, not on fears of future memoir writers. Nor, to
take one example, is there any evidence that the vastly more
substantial and important revelations in Kissinger's memoirs have
inhibited subsequent Sino-American negotiations. But, putting that
aside, I have revised the chapter to meet the point.
This has meant excising insider
insider detail on Sino-British
exchanges. The prelude to the 1991 negotiation could be drawn from
open sources; little change here.
of
There is no account of the detailed exchanges with
Lu Ping. Everyone knows the fact of my meeting with Li Peng and his insistence on signature by the Prime Minister in Peking. I say as much
as that but give no detail. I expound the memorandum
understanding; but that is a public document. For the rest, the
chapter is little changed; but here it concerns Hong Kong in the aftermath of the visit and not any confidential negotiations with the
other side.
As regards the penultimate chapter, I have not altered the first
four pages. I hope we can agree that they are purely historical and
explain why cooperation with China made sense. The central section of
the chapter is more sensitive. It is a much abbreviated account of the
origins of the present problem, written in a deliberately neutral
style, and avoiding that strong criticism of the Governor's
proposals which, in your letter of 27 May, you felt could weaken our
negotiating position. It concentrates on the return to bilateral
London-Peking negotiations in April and its significance. It goes on
to speculate, again in a carefully balanced way, on the future course
of the negotiations. The final section of the chapter puts the