TNAG-2769-FCO40-3986-Hong-Kong-and-the-media-interviews--press-briefings-and-the--1994 — Page 167

JUNI

The moves we had made on the Functional Constituencies

and the Election Committee, as described in the

Governor's LegCo address, had been "stupid" and naive. "Anybody who knew anything about China" could

have told us that the Chinese would pocket them and

give us nothing in return.

Instead of offering these concessions, we should long ago have given the Chinese a public ultimatum. This was the only way to deal with them. Through our - mishandling of the negotiations and our unwillingness to explain to the public what we were doing, we had treated the Hong Kong community with contempt. knew what we were trying to achieve.

us any more.

Nobody

Nobody trusted

1

4.

Our handling of the OPD (K) meeting and the current

phase of the talks had been a particular fiasco.

London and Hong Kong were sending out conflicting

signals. It had been made clear to her in London that

there was no urgency about the talks: we would go on negotiating for as long as necessary. She cited this

both as evidence of a split which she seemed to have

convinced herself had developed between the Governor and HMG; and to support her thesis that nothing we

said about deadlines was credible.

Another particular hobby horse concerned the role of ExCo. Ms Righter claimed that until recently, EXCO had been consulted far more closely on all key policy issues including the handling of China. It was clear

to her that the Governor had decided to cut ExCo out, so that it had now become little more than a rubber

stamp. She claimed that ExCo members had themselves ̈ ̈

complained to her of this.

I refuted all this as firmly but patiently as I could, and explained why the negotiations had taken the course they

CONFIDENTIAL

جانم