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Governor: I think that Malcolm Rifkind's visit to Hong Kong and his subsequent visit to Peking - which hasn't quite finished yet, he's seeing the President, Mr Jiang Zhemin this afternoon, and also seeing Director Lu Ping this afternoon I think his visit to Hong Kong and his visit to Peking have been extremely successful. Of course it is true to say that not all the outstanding problems that we want resolved have been resolved. Of course there are still disagreements and arguments about issues like human rights and the future of the Legislative Council and those are very important points. But I don't think we should always focus on what hasn't been achieved, I think it's important to focus on what has been achieved as well.
And I think, without exaggerating, you can reasonably say that at the beginning of this, as I said earlier, decisive year for Hong Kong, at the beginning of this year we've seen more progress in reaching hard, practical concrete agreements between Hong Kong, Britain and China than we've seen for very many years - on passports, on right of abode, on the container terminal, on the arrangements for co-operation between the Preparatory Committee and the Hong Kong Government, on Air Service Agreements. I think that all those agreements, all those moves forward are to be very welcome and I very much hope that they will give people a little more reassurance.
Speaker: (inaudible) suggested that it's a case of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". How do you say to that?
Governor: I missed the beginning part of your question but I don't actually think that back-scratching comes into it. What Malcolm Rifkind has done, both in Hong Kong and in Peking, is to make absolutely clear how committed we are, how committed the Hong Kong Government is to the defence of people's human rights and civil liberties and to the defence of all the values which are enshrined in the Joint Declaration. At the same time we've managed to move the agenda forward, principally on economic issues, but also on issues which touch profoundly on people's day to day lives, affecting, for instance, the passport and permanent residence in Hong Kong. So I think it's been a very, very valuable visit.
I don't deny that we could have ideally, in an ideal world, perhaps achieved more. But I don't think anybody should belittle what has been achieved and has been agreed. I think the extent of agreement has surprised Can I just finish? --I think
the extent of the agreement has surprised people.
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Speaker: You find the visit very successful and that it has surprised many people. Have both sides made any concession, at least in the case of the CT-9?