XN000022-1996-01-11 — Page 7

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Governor: Well, I think that's the sort of thing that people say who don't actually have any regard for the consequences of their remarks. As I said earlier, if you want the Vietnamese Boat People to return to Vietnam, and if you want them to do that sooner rather than later, you don't give them the impression that if they don't return to Vietnam then they're going to be able to find a home somewhere else. They're not.

Speaker: But the question is, if the problem cannot be resolved before the exchange of sovereignty and the possibility does exist, then as a Governor, what would you ask the British Government to do to resolve the matter?

Governor: What I am going to do as Governor is to do everything within my power to resolve the problem before 1997. As I've said very often, in Hong Kong we have enough problems to deal with without endlessly imagining hypothetical problems and concentrating our argument on them. If we spend the whole time discussing what will happen to Vietnamese Boat People who haven't returned before the middle of 1997, and if we give the Vietnamese Boat People, if we give those economic migrants the impression that they can go somewhere else but Vietnam if only they hand around in Hong Kong, then we're not doing them a service and we're not doing ourselves a service because we're actually suggesting that there is an Eldorado for them which simply doesn't exist.

Speaker: Of course there is no reason why we should only worry about the future and not care about the present but as the Governor you should have a vision. If the matter cannot be resolved by '97, what would you do? You said that the responsibility of Britain and Hong Kong are the same here. If we should assume that there are migrants here, would you be willing to say here that Hong Kong and Britain will take half of them if their duties are the same?

Governor: My job is to do everything I can to resolve the problem before the middle of 1997. I would be certifiably barmy if I was to spend my time suggesting to the Vietnamese Boat People that if only they hang around until the middle of 1997 they can go to the United Kingdom or the United States. They can't and they won't. That isn't an option.

Speaker: Well, let's look at the Sino-British relationship, Governor. Both the Chinese and the English Foreign Ministers have reached a consensus in the past two days. What do you think about that and what will happen in 1996 in the light of that consensus?