TNAG-1310-FCO40-1667-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1984 — Page 127

I

SECRET

MKK040/!

RECEIVED IK

- 9 MAY 1984

DISTRY

Taken

Sir P Cradock

INDEX

8.

CM12111

FROM: R D Clift, HKD DATE: 8 May 1984

cc. Dr Wilson

Mr Burrows Mr Hum

334

FUTURE OF HONG KONG: A LOOK AHEAD

At your meeting on Friday 4 May, we discussed a number of points likely to arise over the next few weeks. The following is a sumary which you may wish to have available before the meeting with the Secretary of State on 8 May.

ANNEXES AND PRESENTATION OF REVISED AGREEMENT

We should aim to get the Chinese to agree to sufficiently detailed annexes before putting forward our revised agreement. We need to see how much detail the Chinese put into their annex when they let us have a full set of their version of the agreement. We should prepare now a revised form of our own annexes, shortening them by removing duplication and amending the language to make them more acceptable to the Chinese, while ensuring that essential points are not disgarded.

While we should concentrate first on the annexes, we might find it tactically helpful to indicate to the Chinese that, if we got agreement on sufficient detail in the annexes, we should be prepared to consider amendments to the main agreement and to propose a revised version.

ITEM 2

We are preparing a revised version of our paper, taking into account the Secretary of State's comments. It will need to be cleared with ODK (possibly out of committee) and shown to EXCO before making a further statement to the Chinese in response to Deng Xiaoping's proposal, probably between the 14 and 15 rounds.

OUTSTANDING POINTS

He should probably keep most of these on one side. The most important might be raised by the Secretary of State if he visits China again in July. (We shall prepare a analysis of relative importance of the different points.

MACHINERY FOR TALKS

Once the Chinese have presented their agreement we shall need to go into more detailed discussion. Initially this should probably be done through more frequent informal meeting between the Ambassador and Zhou Nan. We should also consider devising some way of organising a period of more sustained negotiation in Peking, for instance, by sending a team out there for a week or ten days.

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/VISITS