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The Security Council of the United Nations customarily deals with issues which threaten international peace and security. Now, worrying and damaging to Hong Kong as both the provisional legislature is, worrying and damaging to Hong Kong as the undermining of civil liberties in Hong Kong is, of concern as those matters are to the international community which is going to look at the way China handles Hong Kong as a sort of test of how China is going to behave more broadly in the next few years, I think there would be members of the Security Council who would raise questions about whether the issues which the honourable gentleman and I both feel very strongly about, actually represented the same sort of threat to international peace and security as was represented at present by, for example, the crisis in Rwanda or Zaire which are taking up so much time at the United Nations.
It has been the British Government's policy - one which I strongly support - to ensure that there is as much international support for Hong Kong and Hong Kong's freedoms as possible, and I think that that obliges us to look at ways of encouraging support which would be regarded by others as sensible, rather than ways which would not be regarded as sensible. But I will certainly consider the honourable gentleman's proposal and talk to him further about it, if he would like.
Can I add, however, just one point. I do think that everybody in Hong Kong recognises the degree of concern felt outside as well as inside our community, by those proposals on the Bill of Rights and associated legislation which, in the words of the leaders of our legal profession, threaten to undermine the rule of law. And there is just one point, one plea that I want to make. Hong Kong is a very successful society, a society with a successful government, with successful institutions, with successful defences of its way of life.
It is, to borrow an analogy, it's a Rolls-Royce of a society. And what people outside, I think, find so difficult to understand is why, instead of just driving the vehicle away, why Chinese officials and the Chief Executive designate and his colleagues seem to want to examine the engine, tinker with the tyres, rather than just turn on the ignition and drive the Rolls-Royce as successfully in the future as it has been driven in the past. I think that causes genuine incomprehension elsewhere, as well as genuine concern.
Mr Martin Lee: Maybe - Governor, maybe they want to make sure there is no bomb planted in this Rolls Royce, but my supplementary is this; here's another attempt on my part to get a short answer from you Governor. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, as a result of the advisory opinion given by the ICJ on both of the matters I mentioned earlier at the request of the Security Council, China would then be persuaded to change her mind and not persist in mucking about with the Rolls Royce, as you put it, or by not pursuing its plans to change laws through the appointed provisional legislature?
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