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account of the points in our telegram about the risk that an announcement on 2 February that the Governor was forging ahead to table his proposals might pre-empt a Chinese response to Sir
R McLaren's approach.
5. I have now been through the concerns set out in our telegram with Messrs Ehrman and Dinham. They have consulted the Governor again this evening. He has now accepted that the Chinese dimension has not been given sufficient prominence in their tactical thinking. He has now come round to favouring a public statement following the ExCo meeting tomorrow which would simply say that ExCo had taken further their work on the package and intended to put a final set of proposals to LegCo before the end of the month. I think that this would be much more satisfactory than the plan reflected in the Governor's telegram no 139 to announce a clear cut decision on 2 February. It would give the Chinese some incentive to respond to our proposal for discussions and a deadline for tabling in LegCo.
6.
Since the Governor has now moved away from the idea of announcing firm decisions on 2 February, I do not believe that we need to trouble the Secretary of State in Brussels with these telegrams overnight. We can report the position reached after the ExCo meeting, and also seek his agreement to the Governor's proposals for a message to Qian. He has already agreed this in principle. Under the latest game plan, a message could be sent later in February once final decisions
were taken in ExCo.
m.constdev1
P F Ricketts
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ģ
agree
John Woles 12.
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