TNAG-2746-FCO40-3961-Visits-by-Chris-Patten--Governor-of-Hong-Kong--to-the-UK-1993 — Page 35

CONFIDENTIAL

SIR JOHN COLES' MEETING WITH THE GOVERNOR OF HONG KONG:

29 JULY

Checklist of points to make

Talks with China

White fazer?

- Note that ExCo on 27 July approved our strategy for the 9th Round and the 9 proposed Functional Constituencies. Tiresome that Chinese still prevaricating over through train. But agree that putting our FC proposals on the table puts us in strongest position to press them.

- Your feelings about the next rounds leading to SofS/Qian

meeting in late September? How do you plan to handle LegCo

address on 6 October? Thoughts on eventual presentation of

the outcome?

w

-

Martin Lee argued as expected better no agreement than a bad

agreement. How much difficulty do you expect with him?

HMOCS

(tid 200

dimus with sold?

Officials have not made as much progress as we would have liked. Although one former key Treasury official (bete noir)

has a more sympathetic successor, another key member retains a malign influence.

Signs that Mr Portillo will move towards us on sterling safeguard but not all the way, and only if he is assured the resulting package will be acceptable to you (he wants to avoid salami slicing); also unlikely to budge on SPOS amendment.

However, Treasury officials hint that he might consider the SPOS amendment if we were to accept a lower rate for the safeguard. We suspect the SPOS amendment and a lower rate

would be worth more in real terms to HMOCS members than a 16:1

bgrnd.cole.NAT

JEB

CONFIDENTIAL