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B
Background and Argument
3.
A visit to Hong Kong by the Foreign Affairs Committee will inevitably be high-profile and excite much speculation in the
local press and more widely in the community. In June the
Legislative Council (LegCo) will be in the middle of debating the Governor's constitutional proposals. The process will be delicate and the political atmosphere likely to be volatile. The presence of the FAC during this period would be an
additional complicating factor, and could well lead some people into staking out positions in public from which they would find it difficult to retreat. This would further complicate already
difficult negotiations in LegCo. We would therefore endorse the
Governor's preference for an autumn visit, when the LegCo debate
will almost certainly be concluded. We understand that the FAC
is still engaged in major enquiries into the United Nations and the former Yugoslavia, so it is quite possible they may not, in any case, be ready for Hong Kong till later in the year.
4.
A further question, raised by Sir R McLaren (Peking telno
74), is whether the FAC should visit Peking as well as Hong Kong, as it did last time it conducted an enquiry into Hong Kong, in
1989. We could put this to the Clerk of the Committee when we
get back to her.
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