TNAG-2768-FCO40-3985-Hong-Kong-and-the-media-interviews--press-briefings-and-the--1993 — Page 126

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Hong Kong people to be kept informed/involved.

- As you know, we have agreed with China that the content of the talks should be confidential. Natural that people are anxious to know how talks are going, but we must do everything we can to give them the best chance of success. It is not sensible to negotiate half in public and half in private.

No

- But we have said quite clearly that any understanding reached in those talks must be acceptable to Hong Kong people. question of "secret deals". Talks are about electoral arrangements which will have to be made public in the form of draft legislation and passed by LegCo.

- We have all along encouraged open discussion and listened to the many different views that have been put to us. We will continue to do this in the coming months.

Setting a deadline for the talks? (Defensive)

There is a lot of important ground to cover in the talks: setting deadlines will not help matters. But we have said talks cannot go on indefinitely. Orderly arrangements for the 1994/95

elections must be made.

VIETNAMESE MIGRANTS

- Am pleased that we are making good progress now with this long-standing problem. The Orderly Repatriation Programme has been running successfully for 18 months now. And the outflow from Vietnam reduced to less than a trickle (only 3 new arrivals this year).

note.good.PR

SLM