TNAG-2767-FCO40-3984-Hong-Kong-and-the-media-interviews--press-briefings-and-the--1993 — Page 155

香港總督府

Urgent By Fax

HKB

Dear John,

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Incorporated into

draft submitted

Mark.

into final

Pa

(Hard cc.)

GOVERNMENT HOUSE KONG KONG

Mr 25/2

49

301/1

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY

16 MAR 1993

DESK OFFICEA

INDEX

REGISTRY

PA

Auton Taken

25 February 1993

Secretary of State's Interview with the South China Sunday Morning Post (SCSMP)

The Governor was very grateful for sight of your draft answers, which he thought were very good. We have the following comments, which the Governor has agreed :

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This answer very much understates the importance of Hong Kong in Sino-British relations and paints much too rosy a picture of the current situation, which everyone knows is far from ideal. We suggest you might replace the current draft with the following :

"Of course we regret that we have not yet been able to resolve our differences with China over Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the most important ! He s component in Sino-British relations so the better our cooperation over Hong Kong the closer the, overall Sino-British relationship will be. We have made clear all along our commitment to implementing the Joint Declaration in full and our willingness to discuss the 1994/95 electoral arrangements, which are the subject of the current difficulties, with the Chinese side. We continue to hope that it

it will be possible to reach a solution that is acceptable to all sides; but it would have to provide for electoral arrangements that are open, fair and acceptable to the people of Hong Kong".

We suggest omitting "at all levels" in line 9.

We suggest replacing the final sentence with : "We hope to hold talks with China to see if we can reach an understanding on these matters which we could honourably recommend to LegCo, whose constitutional responsibility it is to enact the legislation. We will stand by LegCo's decision. Obviously the content of diplomatic discussions would have to be confidential, although as

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