TNAG-2156-FCO40-3076-International-Covenant-on-Civil-and-Political-Rights-(ICCPR)-1990 — Page 12

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полов will need to subunt on the whole question of the Third the Third Periodic Report. I would not

DARWIN CHEN'S CALL ON UND, 30 OCTOBER anticipate great Univere

1.

reaction to a

Hu delegate an Thank you for a copy of your minute of 31 October. part of our

Third Periodic Report

delegation.

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to sound 4/11

2. The UK delegation will probably be led by a DUS in the Home Office (Mr Steel will lead on delegation to the Commission on Human Rights). I shall ask UKMis Geneva to sound out the UK member of the Human Rights Committee about the procedural question of Dependent Territories representative undertaking the examination of their Third Periodic Reports. You may be interested to know that we are pursuing the question of a Monserrat representative forming part of the delegation. This may provide cover for a Hong Kong representative or representatives. You may wish to consider submitting on the political implications and possible Chinese reaction to this proposal.

Commission on Human Rights

3. The Commission is, as you wrote, a very politicised body, and this means that the composition of our delegation must be considered very carefully. From the Hong Kong perspective it would be desirable to build up an acquaintance with the workings of the Commission. However, the Chinese are extremely nervous of moves made against them in the Commission: they very effectively defended themselves against a resolution censuring them for Tiananman Square. It is likely that they would both notice and react firmly against our having a known Hong Kong representative on the delegation. There is the added complication that we will be standing for re-election to the Commission at ECOSOC in 1991. If the Chinese decided for whatever reason to mobilise a campaign against the UK, our chances of re-election to the Commission would be considerably diminished. It may be worth our taking a lower profile at the Commission in 1991, and then, we hope, after re-election, we would be able to re-consider the best way of handling Hong Kong representation in the British delegation in 1992. We will need to consider this, probably submit later.

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CODE 18-77

November 1990

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D S Walwyn

CC:

Mr Fifoot

United Nations Department K150 270-2505

Ms Barrett

D Chen Esq, CAB, Hong Kong

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