TNAG-1963-FCO40-2795-Future-of-Hong-Kong-Commonwealth-War-Graves-Commission-1989 — Page 33

CONFIDENTIAL

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

Our ref : HKC 225/1 Your ref: SGD 6/12

Darwin Chen, Esq

Deputy Secretary,

General Duties

Government Secretariat

HONG KONG

Dear Darwin,

COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES

1.

3)

HKC

€225/1

Ne 21/4

13 April 1989

I apologise for, the delay in replying to Donald Tsang's letter of 28 January. You will appreciate that we have rather been snowed under with work arising out of the Foreign Affairs Committee Enquiry.

2. We think that your draft paper is generally on the right lines, and agree that the Land Commission is the appropriate forum in which to raise this issue. Although this kind of matter is not covered by the terms of reference of the Land Commission (as set out in JD 218 to 222), there is, as you have noted, a reference in JD 201, which is a kind of preamble to Annex III, to "land leases in Hong Kong and other related matters". This ought, therefore, to give us sufficient opening to be able to argue that the matter should be dealt with by the Land Commission, if the Chinese are disposed to dispute the point. We had considered whether there might be a case for tackling this issue in the JLG, in the context of Hong Kong's future links with the Commonwealth as a show, but concluded that that would be likely to delay matters further and be more difficult for the Chinese.

3. We would add the following minor points:-

We

(a) Para 13 of the draft ExCo paper states that under the Deed of Appropriation of the Stanley Military Cemetary, maintenance costs are split between the CWGC (2/3) and HKG (1/3), on the grounds that some of those buried there are civilians. think that we would have to make this clear to the Chinese, since the costs will fall to the SAR Government in future. We suggest you also establish whether there are similar considerations for the other public cemetaries.

(b) There remains the question of the management of the cemetaries. Currently the Director of Urban Services is both responsible for the general management of Hong Kong cemetaries and, in his

CONFIDENTIAL

SUYA IS

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