XN000022-1996-10-18 — Page 4

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The community has been extremely unsettled and concerned by those remarks. I'm unsettled and concerned and I will be talking about that statement to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary next week.

Now, I want to add two things. First, we have taken up our concern, the British Government has taken up its concern, at a high level and we look forward to a response. A response which I hope will set people's minds at rest.

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Secondly, it is not the first time that a remark like this has been made in recent months and perhaps if this is a reflection of the mind set, the attitude among senior Chinese officials - perhaps it is better that we find that out now, and, I hope, can do something about it, rather than discover it a little later.

One of the things which I find interesting is that I set out in my Policy Address a few weeks back, benchmarks about how we could all be sure that Hong Kong remained a decent plural successful society in the future. And some people, one or two members of the Preparatory Committee, have been saying in the Legislative Council in the last couple of days, "What's the point of these benchmarks?" Well, you can see what the point of these benchmarks is when you see remarks like those ascribed to, I imagine delivered by, the Vice Premier in the columns of the Asian Wall Street Journal.

So I'm concerned and I hope that that concern which is held to a much greater extent, I think, by people in Hong Kong, I hope that concern can be met very rapidly by reassurance from Peking.

Question: Mr Governor, what do you think the British Government can do and would do to reassure the Hong Kong people of their freedom of assembly and freedom of the press?

Governor: I repeat what I said a moment or two ago. We've taken up our anxiety at a high level with the Government of the PRC. I don't want to add to that at the moment. But the reassurance the reassurance has to come from Chinese officials. When a

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Chinese official says something that worries us and I draw attention to that, and then some people in the community say to me, "What are you doing mentioning these matters which disturb us?", it is reasonable for me to point out that the undermining of confidence is not coming from the Hong Kong Government, is not coming from the British Government, but is coming from very senior officials in Peking.

Question: Speaking of confidence, do you have full confidence in the integrity of Laurence Leung before his retirement; do you continue to have full confidence in his professional integrity; and was the Hong Kong Government in any way warned about him by any foreign government?