TNAG-2717-FCO40-3923-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 16

an

:

saying it is something we have to take account of, and take very seriously if we really respect our responsibilities to Hong Kong

and

-

Mr Rowlands:

With respect there is a difference between 'taking account of' and 'conceding', and it seems to me the whole basis of your submission is that basically we should concede to the fact that the Chinese have, by brute force, their strength and the position they are going to be in, we should concede the point, and basically return to a pre-October 1992 situation. Is that what you are saying?

Sir Percy Cradock: I hope very much we can return to

a pre-October 1992 situation.

conceding.

Mr Rowlands: That is not 'taking account of', that is

I

Sir Percy Cradock: It is everything, Mr Rowlands. dislike very much the suggestion that a compromise, or agreement on a point, is lying flat on your face and being defeated. That I think is not helpful to the argument. had to do in 1982 to 1984 was to go through all this, meet very What we

many difficult points which were far from attractive to us, and decide in the end what is the best thing to do. compromise, to settle?

Is it to Or to be defiant? That was always the easy option. There were hundreds of times in those negotiations where we could have been defiant and struck fine poses and walked out. But we didn't. Why? Because we had the responsibilities of Hong Kong before us, and if we had done that we knew that the negotiations would be at an end and Hong Kong would suffer.

Now this was not just my view. It was the view of all the Ministers at the time, including some you will recall who are not exactly push-overs in negotiations. That was Government policy right up to 1992, i.e. negotiation, tenacious negotiation, but in the end settlement on the best terms we can get, otherwise we harm our client.

-

I am

There is now a different policy, a unilateral policy. urging you to consider the cost of such a policy yourselves, because in the end it doesn't matter so much about not for

Britain, but for Hong Kong to whom we stand in a state of

13