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CONFIDENTIAL
056630
MDTTAN 4964
Mr Yee
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4. I have now been able to catch some of the key players here to probe the background. As you will recall, Senator Evans (Foreign Minister) has been forthright in support of our Hong Kong policy. When asked (in Hong Kong on 9 November 1992) if Australia supported the Governor's position, Senator Evans said "Yes we do. Quite explicitly. Quite overtly. We think Governor Patten is right and that he should continue to go for it in terms of his particular package
and added that the Governor's proposals
in no sense amounted to "any kind of fundamental, head-on challenge to the terms of either the Joint Declaration or more specifically the Basic Law and it is simply not good enough for the Chinese to respond by saying that this amounts to a violation of the Basic Law, the Joint Declaration and associated agreements. I do not think anyone seriously believes that it does."
an
5. The Lague articles have caused quite a flurry here. I understand from officials in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's (DPMC) International Division that there was immediate, but unsuccessful, witch-hunt to uncover the source of Lague's information about Mr Keating's alleged comment to Premier Li. No-one to whom I have spoken at DPMC has been prepared to say whether or not the Australian Prime Minister actually used the words ascribed to him by Lague. DFAT are in the dark. Their Director for Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau Affairs has been away in Taiwan with Senator Cook (Trade Minister). When I caught him on his return, he confided that no-one in DFAT had seen a record of the Prime Minister's meeting with Li Peng. The normal procedure would be for the Australian Embassy note-taker to have sent a draft record to the Prime Minister's office for authorisation. The Australian Ambassador in Peking (Mr Lightowler) was so cautious that "if you asked him about the weather he would say 'no None of the embassy staff would say anything. had come to DFAT from DPMC.
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6. Tweddell continued reassuringly that we would have seen Senator Evans's Senate statement of 21 October (Nigel Whitney's letter of 22 October to Rob Holland) reaffirming Australia's position, unequivocably stating no change to Australian policy on Hong Kong and suggesting that little weight should be attached to Mr Lague's allegation (though not denying it).
COMMENT
6.
This is all pretty murky.
My guess (no more than that) is that
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