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Avuli 14.
The Rt Hon Lord Shawcross GBE QC
60 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y OJP
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
London SWIA 2AH
From The Minister of State
25 January 1993
Dear Lord Shawcross
Thank you for your letter of 18 December about Hong Kong.
Chinese
of
was
I agree with you that our present problems with the
That said, I accept do not rest on narrow legal points. course Pliny's maxim. The point I was seeking to make that the Governor and his experts in Hong Kong, and we here, had very much in mind in drafting his proposals the terms of Joint Declaration, the Basic Law and our previous
with the Chinese discussions
the
proposals are documents.
consistent
side. In our view,
what with
is said in
these those
you
never first one
electing ten
The point I was making on the Election Committee (what refer to
as the "elite" committee) is that there has
The before been such a committee in Hong Kong. ever is to be constituted for the purpose of members of the 1995 Legislative Council. I set out earlier letter our reasons for believing that the Basic does not lay down the composition of this Election Committee. The Governor therefore had to make proposals.
reassure me
you
that the
in my
Law
Joint
he
More generally, let Declaration continues to underpin the policy of this Government and of the Governor. We will have to
agree to differ on whether we should have embarked on a long process of
Chinese before making private consultations with the public the Governor's proposals. But I think that even the Chinese now recognise that the Governor was serious when said that he was putting forward proposals, and was ready to consider alternative proposals from others. Many such alternatives have now come forward. The Legislative Council will have to consider them alongside the Governor's proposals.
that they
have the responsibility for striking the balance.
It is
right
should
/We also stand ready to discuss these
SA