XN000022-1993-04-06 — Page 20

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TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 1993

interpretation of the basic law is a matter for China, for, as

I recall, the NFC. That is a point which China has made clear repeatedly.

It can get one into a fairly Kafkaresque discussion about whether or not this or that is a breach of the basic law. I have had plenty of those discussions. Trying to establish what exactly it is about my proposals which is against the basic law is to borrow the phrase, a little like "trying to shoot fish in a barrel".

I believe it was senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew who said that my proposals appeared to have filled in gaps in the basic law and. that is right. I have passed copies of the basic law over the table, asking Chinese officials to point out where what I have said is in breach of the basic law. It is rather more than a rhetorical device, and it is quite effective. into a complicated discussion about the spirit of the basic law which is not written down on the page!

It then gets one

I hope that one of the things which the advisers will urge on Chinese officials is the importance of securing as much confidence as possible on the part of the people of Hong Kong in the governing institutions of Hong Kong after 1997, and in the basic law as well.

Your second

question

question raises a nice point of moral equivalents. The United Kingdom Government and the Hong Kong Government are keen to go ahead with infrastructure projects, the airport, with container terminals and so on. We are very keen to see the prosperity of Hong Kong continue to surge. Are we to be blamed when Chinese officials threaten that they will not co-

operate? Are we to be blamed when it takes, in all conscience,

/RATHER LONGER

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