GOVERMENT HOUSE HONG KONG.
WED 03 NOU 93 04:50
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
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PG.03
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might be grafted.
He mentioned APEC. I pointed out that this would not help to explain why a senior British official was present. The Canadian said that he had been thinking about using the cover of an academic seminar on Hong Kong due to be held in Vancouver in February. But none of the rest of us thought that Asia Directors could plausibly be expected to go to that.
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The conversation then petered out and we agreed to give the matter more thought. Higginbotham is bound to come back to this issue. I strongly suspect that this is an idea that he has devised himself. He has been an extremely effective Commissioner and has done a great deal to promote the relationship between Hong Kong and China. He is now thining of how his achievements can be continued with the new administration in Canada. Because the Canadians have been such good friends of Hong Kong over the last few years I was careful not to sound over-cautious in my reaction to his proposal. But, as I agreed with Mueller in a private conversation afterwards, we do need to handle this very carefully. It has occurred to me since that one way of dealing with it might be to take advantage of a meeting of Asia Directors on say Cambodia, if there is to be such a thing. But I am out of touch with the Cambodia issue these days and have no idea whether such meetings still take place. If they did that would cover most of the countries that the Canadians have in mind, but not of course New Zealand.
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on this.
I should be grateful for any thoughts you might have
Yours ever
Bob for
(R N Peirce)
Political Adviser
c.c.
t
Mr Martin Dinham Government House
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