February 1993
Rt Hon The Lord Shawcross GBE QC
House of Lords
London SW1A OPW
Thank you for your letter of 28 January. It was good to see you at the Chatham House meeting.
You recognise the problem of securing the presence of an alleged offender before an international court might be empowered to issue Advisory or Declaratory Opinions. Although Advisory Opinions by the ICJ have an important role to play in relation to certain international situations confronting the UN, I do not see any role for them in relation to individual criminal responsibility. Similarly I would not be in favour
of trials in absentia.
On your point about Hong Kong, the position is that I briefed the Chinese Foreign Minister, in detail, on the constitutional elements of the Governor's speech in late September, that is two weeks before the speech was made. There were no discussions with the Chinese before that on the Governor's specific proposals, which he was developing over the summer in Hong Kong. But we had raised with them many times our belief that there should be a change in the Basic Law to increase the number of directly-elected seats. And they had told us of their concerns that the Governor should not propose an increase in the directly-elected seats in LegCo, and should not appoint liberal members of LegCo onto the Executive Council. The Governor took both points into account in framing his proposals.
PS/shawcross5.2/NJH
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