21 December 1993
CONFIDENTIAL
Ian McVay Esq
Canadian High Commission
Macdonald House
1 Grosvenor Square
London W1X OAB
ки
(29)
Ra
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
MUD 021
021/1
RECE
22 DEC 1993
INDL
Dear Jan.
lan,
Many thanks for your letter of 15 December about a meeting to exchange views on Hong Kong.
We welcome this proposal and believe that a meeting on the lines you suggest would be very useful. We are grateful for the offer by your Government to host the meeting. Both we and the Hong Kong Government look forward to participating. I must first underline that a meeting among a small group of developed countries to discuss Hong Kong will inevitably be sensitive. If there was to be any publicity, Chinese suspicions of an international plot against them over Hong Kong would only intensify. We therefore attach great importance to knowledge of the meeting being tightly restricted in capitals. We also agree that the meeting should be kept small and participation kept at working level. We hope that your Government will emphasise these points in further contacts with other participants.
If news of the meeting were to leak, we would need an agreed cover story. We suggest that this should be that the event was a seminar to discuss Asia Pacific issues with particular reference to Hong Kong. This is not very convincing, and Ottawa may be able to think of a better one. We very much hope that it will not be necessary to deploy any cover story at all.
On attendance, I would plan to attend for the UK. The Hong Kong Government (who will be in touch direct with your Commission in Hong Kong) propose to send the Governor's Political Adviser, Bob Peirce, together with one, or possibly two, working level colleagues from other branches of the Hong Kong Government. We would plan to operate as a single delegation.
CONFIDENTIAL