TNAG-2882-FCO40-4154-Extension-of-the-Hague-Conventions-on-Trusts-and-Child-Abduc-1993 — Page 12

(by the)

1 April 1993

Ms J S Foakes

Room 365, 3rd Floor

pa

P.Z.L.

(Private International law).

37011

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY

5 APR 1993

DESK OFFICER

INDEX

PA

REGISTRY Action Take

Central Government Offices

(East Wing)

Lower Albert Road

HONG KONG

Foreign & Commonwealth

Office

London SWIA 2AH

Telephone: 071-

270-3067

Fax: 270-2767

Dear Joanne,

HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF TRUSTS

I am enclosing, primarily for your information, some self-explanatory correspondence about a small problem we came across recently concerning the extension of this Convention to Hong Kong (and Montserrat).

In short, our instrument of extension of this Convention to Hong Kong failed to mention the reservation under Article 16 and a declaration under Article 20 made by the United Kingdom upon its ratification of the Convention. This was an oversight as it had always been intended that all dependent territories would be covered by the same reservation and declaration and the Chinese were consulted and agreed to the extension of the Convention to Hong Kong and to its continued application after 1997 in the knowledge of this (see Hong Kong telno 296 of 27 January 1989, FCO telno 300 of 1 February 1989 and UKREP JLG Hong Kong telno 85 of 3 March 1989).

None of this has any practical consequence as far as we aware. You will see that our proposed action has the approval of the Hague Conference and the depositary (the Netherlands government). We therefore propose to extend the Convention to the Island of Guernsey and the Turks and Caicos Islands as soon as possible and at the same time make a statement along the lines proposed. If you or HKD see any problem in this course of action, I should be grateful if you would let me know by Monday 19 April.

Yours ever,

Nigel

ND Parker

Assistant Legal Adviser

Cc: Mr Bunten, HKD