TNAG-1871-FCO40-2659-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China-1989 — Page 33

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Mr Millington, FED

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Tibet

letter

The Secretary of State has seen Lord Ennals' of 1 February to which you are drafting a reply. He is aware that the 30th anniversary of the Chinese takeover of Tibet will be coming up in March. It will be a high profile occasion here and will attract a lot of media attention. We should therefore start to prepare for that now and the Secretary of State would like to use Lord Ennals' letter as a peg to do so. He thinks that we should be adopting a rather higher profile on Tibet and envisages an approach to the Chinese Ambassador to explain to him why we need to do so. He believes that inactivity or silence on our part will be used by the press in connection with their very negative line on Hong Kong.

The draft letter will therefore need careful thought. The Secretary of State would also like. advice on whether he should meet Lord Ennals and members of his committee. I think his inclination would be to do so.

8 February 1989

CC:

PS/Lord Glenarthur

Mr Gillmore

Mr McLaren

Mr Paul, HKD

(R N Peirce)

2014/2 den

Miss Marsoon

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mr Connan

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and pa