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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
D G Martin Esq UK Rep JLG
Hong Kong
Dear Doug
GREATER OPENNESS ABOUT JLG WORK
Telephone 01-
Your reference
Our reference
Date
FAC FILE
+55
270 2655
COLABA
21 August 1989
HKE
"113
1. Thank you for your letter of 4 August highlighting this recommendation from the FAC Report. It is not something to which we had yet given much attention. As you will appreciate, our minds have been on matters other than the FAC over the last few weeks. But there are many more far-ranging recommendations to which we have been giving some thought, and which we will probably have to handle in greater depth than this one. However, to deal with your general question first, it is our intention to reply to the Report either at the end of September or in early October, before Parliament resumes on 16 October. To some extent the timing depends on how close we are to an announcement on the nationality package since David Howell has made it clear he would ideally prefer a full, if later, response,
response, to a holding reply.
2.
As for the specific point about rendering the JLG negotiating process more open, I share your doubts about how far we can go in this direction. The obvious problems with Vincent Lo's proposal are that it would make co-ordinating our negotiating position (with HKG and Peking) even more complicated by adding another voice (and one which might endeavour to foist impossible negotiating briefs upon us) and would risk losing the degree of confidentiality we currently seek to protect in JLG discussions. Added to this is the additional risk of antagonising the Chinese. They have already made clear their annoyance at our playing the public opinion card and would be bound to see the establishment of an advisory group of local people as a means to exploit it further.
3. In practice we think the JLG process is about as open as it Donald Liao is involved fully of course and is an ExCo Our positions are cleared in advance with ExCo and a
can be. member.
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