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The second question is how we relate to the Preparatory Committee and there, what I think I said, is that we believe that we should help the Preparatory Committee in every way which they thought was desirable. I didn't say that members of the Hong Kong Civil Service should be members of the Preparatory Committee. I don't imagine for one moment that Chinese officials or the NPC would consider that. But I do think.... that we have to help. We have to help and would want to help, by the provision of intellectual and administrative resources and in other ways that Chinese officials may think desirable. There are all sorts of examples that one can draw in from other societies or communities. When there is a change of president in the United States, there's a transition team established between one administration and the next to try to smooth things through and I daresay we can draw on that experience as well as to make some of our own ground rules.
There are particular areas where we will plainly have to work very closely with the Preparatory Committee and with the Chief Executive Designate. For example, in drawing up the 1997 Budget. That will involve very close discussions both about public expenditure and about macro economic judgments with designated members of the Preparatory Committee in 1996. So those are all practical ways in which we are prepared to be as co-operative as possible with the Preparatory Committee. I set a number of them out in the autumn of last year in my speech to the Legislative Council. Our impression is that Chinese officials want to connect on those issues, though they haven't - who would expect it? - been loud in their hosannas or thrown their hats very high in the air. But the sooner we can get down to discussing those practical measures and the sooner we can explain the outcome to the Legislative Council and the community, in my judgment, the better.
I said the other day and it wasn't the establishment of pre-conditions, it seemed to me to be a statement of the thunderingly obvious, that we should be prepared to co- operate wherever we believed that it was in the interests of Hong Kong, that it was in the spirit of the Joint Declaration and where it clearly was in the long term interests of those people who man the administration of Hong Kong, and woman the administration of Hong Kong, our civil servants. I repeat, those aren't pre- conditions, they are things I imagine that Chinese officials believe as well. When Mr Qian Qichen talks about the importance of a smooth transition, I imagine that he has some of those things in mind himself.
Question: I'm not sure that Steve Vines' question has actually been clarified. I have a separate question but I'm just wondering if you could pick up on that point and clarify. Are you saying that if the invitation from the PWC is made to the Government and not to the officials themselves that you are prepared to accept it? If that's what you are saying, it does seem to be a shift.