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Question: What is your view on ... seconding senior Government officials to the Chief Executive staff?
Governor: If I may say so. I think a lot of the questions about working with the Chief Executive are only going to be able to be resolved in practice when there is a Chief Executive. I think it will be much easier for us to settle the details of these issues with the Chief Executive (designate) than it is talking as it were in a vacuum today with Chinese officials who I'm sure are well disposed towards the interest of the Chief Executive (designate) but aren't quite the same thing. I've got no doubt at all that a Chief Executive (designate) will need to have a team of officials to support him or her; that's entirely proper. I would think it was right that the Chief Executive (designate) should have office accommodation, should have transport and should have some people to help him or her plan his or her engagements and to plan for the future. But I don't honestly think that we can get into very considerable detail until the Chief Executive (designate) exists because he or her will have their own ideas, he or she sorry. It's getting complicated.
Question: Governor, do you welcome what the Vice Premier of China Qian Qichen told Reuters that it is easy to reach an agreement on handover ceremony ...?
Governor: We are still politely puzzled. The expression that what we wanted for the handover was a ceremony which was solemn, grand and dignified was a Chinese expression. It came from the Chinese side during the meeting that Mr Hurd had with Mr Qian Qichen last spring. It was then used again at the later meeting in the year between the Foreign Ministers when Mr Rifkind had his first meeting with Mr Qian. It's an expression that came from the Chinese side. So, if the Chinese side want to move away from that, well, whatever other formula they have, what Mr Rifkind had said and I've said it as well, is we think it's incomparably better to have a ceremony between the departing and the incoming sovereign which can show the world that despite the problems from time to time, we've brought to a successful conclusion an issue left over from the 19th century, that two members of the Security Council have dealt with this in a reasonably rational and calm way and we think that that would be the best way of getting the SAR Government off to a flying start. But, we also think that there are more important issues to tackle that we can't spend the next year arguing about that and if it proves impossible to agree on mutually satisfactory arrangements, if we can't find a formula for that handover ceremony together, then we obviously have to settle for second best and arrange things ourselves and see the Chinese arrange things themselves. What is absolutely clear is we are going in a sense of sovereignty to the past and the Chinese in a sense of sovereignty that are going to arrive. Everywhere else, I don't think you have an argument about how to handle that and I hope we can avoid one too.