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Chief Secretary's media session
The following is a transcript of the Chief Secretary, Mrs Anson Chan's media session this (Saturday) afternoon:
Chief Secretary: Good afternoon everyone. I thought I would have a word with you so that you don't have to come out to the airport when I leave this evening. You all know I shall be paying a one-week visit to three European countries, that is Brussels, the Hague and Bonn. This will be my first official visit to the EU countries since I assumed the post of Chief Secretary. I very much welcome this opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister of Belgium and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and with other senior officials and with the business community in these three countries, because it will give me a very good opportunity to bring them up to date on what's hapenning in Hong Kong, to try and address matters of mutual concern and in particular to explain to the people in these countries how we are preparing for the transition and for the reversion of sovereignty to China in 1997. I am sure that this will be a very, very productive and fruitful visit and I am very much looking forward to it.
Question: Mrs Chan, the experts in the JLG are meeting next week to talk about the Court of Final Appeal. Is this the last chance to come to some kind of substantive agreement... so that the Bill can be introduced with the agreement of Beijing.
Chief Secretary: I am sure you are all aware of the importance to Hong Kong, not only to the people in Hong Kong but also to the wider investing community for us to be seen to be taking every possible step to set up the Court of Final Appeal as soon as possible. We have a 1991 agreement with the Chinese. Both sides have stated on many occasions that they desired to see this Court of Final Appeal established before 1997. The Chinese have had the draft Bill since May. We've had several discussions with the Chinese and we've answered all the questions that they have put to us so far. We understand that the Chinese have further questions and I very much hope that at the next expert group meeting, which is scheduled for next week, that the Chinese will let us have all their outstanding questions and I can assure them that we will do our very best to answer their questions. I further hope that either at these expert group meeting or very, very shortly after that the Chinese will be able to let us know that they agree to the draft Bill so that we can put it forward to the Legislative Council. It remains our objective to try and get the legislation enacted before the current session of Legco ends, which is towards the end of July.