TNAG-2766-FCO40-3983-Hong-Kong-and-the-media-interviews--press-briefings-and-the--1993 — Page 39

05-FEB-1990 09:51

FOO NEWS DEPT

DEIGN SECRETARY

www

DOORSTEP

071 270 3734

P.04

LONDON 19 JANUARY 1993

to see how and whether such a meeting could be useful, not just

meeting for the sake of getting in a plane and getting out again,

it has to be a useful meeting. I think it is a little too soon

for either side to decide that.

QUESTION:

Would you be unwilling to travel to Beijing for that meeting?

POREIGN SECRETARY:

I am always delighted to go to Peking, I spent happy years of my

life in Peking. The question is whether and in what circumstances

a meeting would actually be useful.

QUESTION:

What do you think about the CRC's proposals?

FOREIGN SECRETARY:

We did not go into the details of it, they kindly left us the

paper, but we did not go into any of the details of it at all.

Their concern was that there should be a dialogue, obviously there

has to be a dialogue in Hong Kong, the days when these matters can

be settled between London and Peking without taking any account of

opinion in Hong Kong have obviously gone. Hong Kong has changed,

Hong Kong clearly has a greater wish to have a say in its own

future and this debate which you are now having in Hong Kong on

these proposals is part of that and the discussion in LEGCO will

be a further part of that. So that discussion in our view is