XN000022-1995-06-14 — Page 4

3 -

Governor: I very much hope that the CFA agreement will break the logjam and make it easier to reach agreements on other issues. But I don't think that will automatically happen and I also believe that it should give us some new ways of dealing with the adaptation of laws issue. We're getting on with the work of drafting, but there are Chinese concerns about what I think lawyers call the modality, the way in which the trigger mechanism which you actually use for the adaptation of laws. But I hope we can cope with that.

Question: So you hope the CFA agreement can help the implementation of the mid- night legislation?

Governor: I very much hope that the agreement on the CFA will help to secure sensible ways of dealing with the adaptation of laws. We've been doing well on the localisation of laws. The programme on that front has been going ahead pretty successfully. On adaptation, the slowness hasn't been for work that we've been doing on the laws themselves. The difficulty has been, as you suggested, that trigger mechanism at mid-night on the June 30/July 1, 1997 and I hope that perhaps the approach that we've put forward in clause 1 of the bill might be a way in which we can unlock that problem.

Question: On the compulsory provident fund, since the Chinese side still keep silent on that, do you think that you can make the implementation of that scheme which is intended by the Hong Kong government, will be implemented in...

Governor: I hope that we'll be able to see reasonably swift passage of the legislation. It's enabling legislation. There's still a great deal of detailed work to be done on the scheme. Obviously, Chinese officials would quite properly want to be consulted about the details of the legislation. But unless we get the enabling legislation in place, we'll waste a couple of years before we can set up any sort of scheme. My view is that the people of Hong Kong want us to get on with things.

Question: But you hope that it will not be implemented in such a rush way?

Governor: I think that the people of Hong Kong have been observing government discussing this issue for two decades or longer. I don't think they actually regard trying to reach some conclusions at the end of that period as an undue rush.

Question: Governor, do you have any response to the recent American policy about the Vietnam boat people?