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Macau Negotiations
Sir Roger Lobo approached me
last night about the
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Macau negotiations. He had been over to see the new Governor,
who was nice enough but an academic. He had brought with him a
team who knew nothing about Macau. Typically, his first
gesture had been to visit the jail and the hospital. Sir R
Lobo thought this was no way to go about things. The Macau
administration should be concentrating rather on issues like
building up the local civil service.
2.
The
It was
Sir R Lobo had been appalled to discover not only that
the Governor of Macau was not on the Portuguese negotiating
team; but also that he was to make no serious input in the
negotiations. There appeared to be no official machinery for
gathering Macau views and formulating positions.
negotiations were to be in Peking (the Portuguese had accepted
this) but beyond this little appeared to be settled.
not clear to Sir R Lobo in which language the negotiations
would take place. Certainly the Portuguese had no Chinese
speakers (pace the Portuguese Ambassador). Sir R Lobo had
learned that the Portuguese starting position was "to go to
Peking with an open mind". He did not think much of that . He
had warned the Governor that the Portuguese should not confuse
Chinese hospitality with Chinese negotiations. Points lost in
negotiation were never recovered.
3.
Generally thee was a lack of commonsense in Macau
about China, and of information. Sir R Lobo thought they
should establish a Political Adviser post. (For BLDC reasons I
did not encourage this idea).
4.
Sir Roger Lobo thought that HKG would want to keep
generally abreast of the negotiations. There might be points
on which Macau would want our guidance or on which we ourselves
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