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Mr Rifkind: There were a number of areas that we discussed in London. And of

part the meeting that I will have with Qian Qichen tomorrow afternoon in Peking, will be to review these areas, so it is difficult at this stage to give you a full answer on matters of that kind. We have had, for example, meetings between some of the Hong Kong officials and their Chinese colleagues, some contacts of a kind that had not taken place in the past and which were desired by the civil service here. That has begun to happen and we have had some discussions on the outstanding problems regarding the container terminal CT9. That may be slowly moving towards a resolution. There have been discussions on a number of other items of that kind. But I will need to hear clearly from my Chinese colleague tomorrow the precise degree of progress. It was relatively recently that we had the meeting in London, it's only, literally, a few weeks ago, about two months ago, but the movement has been of a helpful kind and this is something I welcome.

Mr David Li: Sir, did you discuss about the co-operation the British Government and the Hong Kong Government is going to give to the Preparatory Committee?

Mr Rifkind: Yes, we have always made it clear that even if we have considerable sense of disappointment about the membership of the Preparatory Committee, that it is highly desirable for there to be co-operation. That is in Hong Kong's interest. I believe that is what the people of Hong Kong would expect and we indeed stand ready to give maximum co-operation of that kind.

Mr Martin Lee: Mr Foreign Secretary. I had to leave early from the opening of the legal year this afternoon in order to ask a question of you. So lawyer to lawyer, or QC to QC, can I ask you what you would actually do to - using your own words at lunch - `ensure that Hong Kong people's fundamental rights and freedoms are properly safeguarded', if your counterparts in China were not to listen to your eloquent entreaties in relation to the scrapping of this LegCo and then to replace it with an appointed provisional one, and the emasculation of the Bill of Rights Ordinance? Now just confining to these two important matters, what will your government actually do. not say no matter how eloquently you may say it if they were to refuse to listen?

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