TNAG-2879-FCO40-4151-Agreements-between-the-Hong-Kong-Special-Administrative-Regi-1993 — Page 144

Your Ref: IL/TRE/54/1

Our Ref:

Date:

June 1993

CONFIDENTIAL

DM Edwards Esq

Law Officer (International Law) Government Secretariat

HONG KONG

270-2647

AGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE UK AND THE HKSAR

1.

Thank you for your letter of 24 May reporting a meeting you recently held in Hong Kong. The timetable you propose seems to us to be fine (but see the comments in paragraph 2 below). Obviously we will need to retain some flexibility over the dates until the arrangements for the JLGS in the rest of this year become clearer. It may well be difficult to fit you in in December if the London JLG is then, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

2. Since we last spoke we have begun our trawl of other Government Departments here. We may have run into a problem over a Visa Abolition Agreement. One of the elements of the Maastricht treaty is to pass competence for the EC common visa list to the Community and it will be the Commission which will lead on which countries are added or deleted from the list. Until 1 January 1996 unanimous voting will be required to add any countries to the list but after then it will be done by qualified majority voting. We are examining what if anything the effect of this may be on Hong Kong but I thought I should warn you that we may not be able to implement any VAA and therefore any work you do on this may be otiose.

3. We intend that our team will be lead by Shelagh Brooks as far as is possible. However initial indications from the Department of Transport suggest that they would prefer to lead on the ASA. I will keep you informed of any further developments. I suggest that John Hunter should send his preliminary questions on extradition and MLA to Rod Bunten in the first instance.

PF Ricketts

CONFIDENTIAL