TNAG-2990-FCO40-3574-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-talks-betwee-1992 — Page 21

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He Compositiz of He First Site Lepho cha Ctte, FROM: P F Ricketts as it does for He Selectia che her ife first Chiel

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Hong Kong Department

DATE: 28 October 1992

Executive,

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Mr Hám

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News Dept

Mr Llewellyn,

Hong Kong (by fax) Miss Saunders

to me to the commitin the 1995 Elastin (matter?

HONG KONG: PRESS BRIEFING

C'm 28%

Ps

1. I spent an hour this morning briefing Ray Whitaker of the Independent and Alex Nichol of the FT on the material we published earlier in the morning.

2.

They seemed well disposed and not particularly combative. But inevitably, they homed in on the weakest point in our case, namely the paragraph in the final message from the Secretary of State indicating agreement in principle to the arrangements proposed by the Chinese side on the composition of the Election Committee. I made the obvious points in reply:

the broad context, and our failure to achieve a satisfactory deal on the number of directly-elected seats:

China's failure to meet our requirements to include in the Basic Law all the five principles, and details of the

X composition for the 1995/7 Election Committee (essential if we were to show the Hong Kong people that this would not be gerrymandered structure);

the sentence in the Basic Law excepting the first SAR LegCo from the composition in Annex 1.

3. I was also able to make play with the attached very useful articles from the Chinese language Hong Kong press, which indicated that as recently as a month ago, the Chinese side still seemed to have an open mind on the composition of the Election Committee. I suggested that all the talk of secret deals was therefore something of a red herring, intended to distract attention away from the unwillingness of Chinese officials to make any proposals of their own for filling the gaps left in the Basic Law on electoral arrangements.

pressbrief.BRIEF.bern