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Transcript of Governor's media session
The following is the transcript of the media session by the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, on his arrival at the airport from Singapore:
Governor: I've had a short but interesting visit to Singapore. I spoke at a conference organised on world economic issues by Fortune magazine. Other speakers were the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and Singapore, Dick Cheney, the former Secretary for Defence in the American Administration, Lady Thatcher, the Senior Minister of Singapore and a number of business leaders including business leaders from Hong Kong like Gordon Wu and Richard Li. It's a good conference and I think you would have seen copies of my speech. I've also had meetings with Singaporean governmental leaders and business leaders, most notably the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Finance Minister and the Senior Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who I was pleased to have 55 minutes with this afternoon. So it's been a pretty full programme and I am pleased to be back.
Question: Did appeals ?
you take up the case of Daniel Chan who is ... making personal
Governor: I referred in my conversations with the Prime Minister to a number of appeals for clemency with which we dissociated ourselves. In the case of Mr Chan, there was an appeal from the British Government with which I and the Hong Kong Government associated ourselves. And then there was a further demarche by the further appeal by the European Union with which we again associated ourselves and I referred to those matters in my conversation with the Prime Minister but obviously in the Singapore system, it's a matter for the President rather than for him.
Question: Governor, would you please correct me if I'm... what you said in the previous question time in the Legco, you mentioned that you don't cross out the possibility to implement the Old Age Pensions scheme so far as there are sufficient support in Legco. So what do you think about last night's debate?