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views on the main issues, then Sir R McLaren will equally be needing new negotiating authority after the Sixth
Round.
A
6.
We have established that the only feasible date for an OPD (K) meeting in the coming weeks is Thursday 1 July. That has been pencilled into the diaries. I recommend
that we now go firm on it. The timing is about right, whether or not we are making progress in the talks. Either way, it would be an opportunity for Ministers (and the Governor and Sir R McLaren, who should be present) to consider whether we should move on to serious negotiation by indicating a willingness to accept changes to the Governor's proposals on the Election Committee and the new Functional Constituencies, as part of an overall deal which was satisfactory, including Chinese assurances on the through train. The Governor has already begun to prepare the ground for this in ExCo. At a meeting which Mr Goodlad attended on 1 June, the Governor set out the parameters for change which he thought would be acceptable when the time came. There was no dissent from this
approach in ExCo.
7. There will be a difficult judgement to make about whether we should take the initiative in offering changes to the Governor's proposals, even conditionally, if we have not smoked out the full Chinese position by the end of the Sixth Round, or whether it is worth pursuing the negotiations in those circumstances. We would need to analyse the pros and cons in a memorandum for OPD (K) in preparation for discussion there. We would finalise this
after the Sixth Round of talks, and clear it with the
Governor and Sir R McLaren.
hum4.6strategy
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