TNAG-2912-FCO40-4187-International-support-from-Asia-regarding-the-future-of-Hong-1993 — Page 100

CONFIDENTIAL

An election has been called for 18 July. The campaign will have started on 4 July. The LDP are likely to do badly, but

will remain the largest single party. Depending on the

election result they may form a coalition with the break-away Hata party and others, or be faced by a coalition of opposition parties led by Hata, the common strand of which

will be the promotion of political reform. Whatever the

outcome it is very unlikely that Mr Miyazawa, whose name is

most closely associated with the political reform debacle,

will be Prime Minister at the time of our Prime Minister's

visit to Japan in September.

UK/Japan Bilateral Relations

Political Dialoque

Over recent years we have as a matter of policy steadily built

up our political dialogue with Japan. This now covers almost

all the major world issues, on most of which we see eye to

eye. One of the priorities of our Presidency was to enhance

the process of political dialogue between the EC and Japan.

During his visit to Japan in April, the Foreign Secretary

stressed our intention of further developing the bilateral

dialogue. He reaffirmed our commitment to annual

consultations between Foreign Ministers and agreed with the

Japanese that there should be annual exchanges between PUSS

and DUSS of the two Foreign Ministries.

The Prime Minister may wish to say:

Pleased that we have been able to build up political

dialogue between the UK and Japan over recent years. This has

demonstrated how close we are on most of the vital issues and

has produced some excellent practical results, eg the UNGA

Resolution on Conventional Arms Transfers of 1991.

fed18/G7SUMMIT/pmmiyabilateral

CONFIDENTIAL