Mr Hum
PS/Mr Goodlad
Private Secretary
SECRET
Rile
197
нес RECE
012
TRY
1. NUT 1993
CISTRY on Taken
FROM: P F Ricketts
Hong Kong Dept
DATE: 11 November 1993
CC:
Miss Brooks
Mr Fry, FED
Mr Wye, RAD (FE)
A
B
HONG KONG: CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: OATH OF ALLEGIANCE
Problem
1. What form of oath should we propose to the Chinese that Legislators elected in 1995 should take in order to ride the Through Train in 1997.
Recommendation
2.
That the oath should take the form of the attached draft proposed by the Hong Kong Government. Departmental Legal Advisers are content. I submit a draft telegram, which will need to be despatched today to meet Hong Kong's deadline.
Background and Argument
3. We discussed at the Secretary of State's Office Meeting on 9 November the terms of an oath which we would table in the talks, picking up as much as possible of the language proposed by Jiang Enzhu (summary attached).
4.
It
Hong Kong have now put together the attached draft oath. This deals with most of the points suggested by Jiang Enzhu. includes (in prospective terms) the crucial undertaking not to "engage in activities whose objective is aimed at overthrowing the CPG of the PRC". The points not included from Jiang's list
are:
- that members of the first SAR legislature must love their country and love Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Government's view (supported by the two barristers on ExCo) is that this would leave too much scope for subjective judgement by the post-1997 LegCo on whether the actions of members were consistent with their oath on this point. But it is one which the Chinese side are likely to press hard to have included.
SECRET