At the General Assembly, we supported the Commission's request to be granted a mandate to draft a statute of an
international criminal court. We now await that draft and will
give it very careful consideration.
Meanwhile with our European partners we are considering whether the Security Council might establish some type of tribunal to deal with many allegations of criminal offences against international law in the former Yugoslavia.
The fundamental problem is, and has always been, to secure the presence before the court of the accused. This cannot be done without the active cooperation of the States in which they live. For this reason many States will be opposed to becoming parties to any convention establishing an international
criminal court which has the power to demand the surrender of
the accused. In that respect, Nuremberg is not a precedent for today's circumstances.
You also asked about the democratisation proposals due to be submitted to the LEGCO in Hong Kong soon. The Governor's
proposals for the 1995 elections were raised at the
twenty-fifth meeting of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group which met in Hong Kong from 8 to 10 December 1992. The Chinese
position in essence was that there could be no discussions of
the 1995 elections unless the Governor withdrew his proposals. We made it clear that we did not accept that either side had
the right to insist on preconditions for talks. We did not
insist that Chris Patten's proposals should form the sole basis
for such talks. We were prepared to discuss any aspects of the subject that the Chinese wished, as well as any ideas they wished to put forward or areas in which they felt
Chris Patten's proposals might be contrary to the Basic Law.
I hope this helps, and look forward to seeing you at
Chatham House.
DOUGLAS HURD
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