principles, and as part of an overall agreement. We have, for example, offered conditionally to reduce the proposed
franchise of 2.7 million voters for the Functional
Constituencies by about two-thirds proof of the efforts we
have made to try to achieve an agreement.
We said the start of the talks that they could
not continue indefinitely. The time is rapidly approaching when the elections will have to be held and, if they are to be
held, electoral laws have to be passed in time. That will
be a massive task for the Legislative Council.
We therefore wanted to explore fully the possibility of an interim agreement. This would have enabled us to get on with legislation on the more urgent issues, and gained a
little more time to resolve the rest.
I explained to Mr Qian Qichen in New York on 1 October that this aim would not be achieved by an interim package restricted to District Board and Municipal Council elections. To deal with all the more urgent issues, an interim package would need to include the voting age and the voting method for
all three sets of elections, including the Legislative Council, and the abolition of appointed membership in the District Boards and Municipal Councils.
I can see no reason why this package should be difficult
for the Chinese side. They had no problem with including some proposals applying to the Legislative Council - for example the voting age - in an interim package.
The Governor, with the advice of his Executive Council, and I consider that there are compelling reasons for including each of the elements in our interim package. The Governor
explained the reasons clearly in his Statement to the
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