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Nonetheless, the community in Hong Kong want talks. We therefore have to be seen to have tried to hold them.
3. This issue may well prove academic, since all concerned agree that pressure from the community in Hong Kong for talks makes it inevitable that we must try to hold them: and there is a resigned expectation in Hong Kong that the Chinese will take us at our word.
4. I have not tried to gloss over the differences in the attached paper. In any case, their operational significance is limited. We all accept that talks are unlikely to reach agreement, and that we therefore need to consider the points in the remainder of the paper about what the Chinese might do and how we could respond. There is broad agreement on these.
5.
I will produce a much shorter agenda of key points for discussion in time for the Secretary of State's meeting on 16 April.
PF Ricketts
hu31.3issues ahead
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