TNAG-2711-FCO40-3917-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-and-Par-1993 — Page 108

HONG KONG

CONFIDENTIAL

Useful discussion with the Governor and colleagues concerned yesterday.

Some signs of progress in the talks with China in recent

weeks. This has opened up the prospects of an interim

agreement covering the more urgent issues. If we can achieve that by early December, it would enable us to introduce legislation on arrangements for the District Board and Municipal Council elections, and the longer lead-time items for the LegCo elections.

That would give us a little more time to tackle the remaining issues on the LegCo elections, where there are still significant differences of view between the two sides.

If we cannot reach an interim agreement, the Governor will need to introduce legislation on these issues in early December anyway.

The Chinese side are likely to break off the talks at that time: but we would give them every opportunity to continue negotiations in some form on the remaining issues.

If the Chinese side do break off the talks in early December, we will need to mount a vigorous campaign both here and in Hong Kong to explain our approach.

We are also encouraging friends who support our policy on Hong Kong (US, Japan and others) to use forthcoming high level contacts with China (eg President Jiang Zemin in Seattle later this month) to press for a sensible Chinese approach.

CONFIDENTIAL