TNAG-2990-FCO40-3574-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-talks-betwee-1992 — Page 36

28-OCT-1992 19:54

Co87 tinger

HK GOVERNMENT HOUSE

Sir John Cakes

Everett News D

Mr Man,

MANS

Ms Cyerelt

Misi Samich

sell

852 521 1968

P.02

787

Wednesday, October 28,

1992

TRANSCRIPT:

Governor speaks to press after visiting Tsuen Wan

relish 2570.

This is the third visit that I've made to Tsuen Wan since I became Governor, but this was the first officials visit that I made to the District Board. I very much enjoyed the opportunity of talking to the Chairman and his colleagues, to hearing some of their views on, for example, transport problems in Tsuen Wan which had also been raised with me when I held a public meeting here just after my speech to the Legislative Council. I'm delighted with the reception I got this afternoon and will look forward to coming back to Tsuen Wan in the future. As you know I make a District Board visit every week when I can and it's a great help to me to be able to meet District Board members to hear about the problems they have to tackle at first hand.

In the light of Can I add one other point about events today. the allegations that were made public after my visit to Peking that there had been a secret deal between the United Kingdom and Chinese governments in 1990 on the future political development of Hong Kong, and in the light of the questions which I received on that subject at the Legislative Council meeting on Saturday morning, I approached the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Douglas Hurd over the weekend to get his agreement to publish the documents which had been referred and by some pro-Peking to apparently by Chinese authorities and by some

newspapers.

I have to make it absolutely plain that during the meetings that I had last week in Peking, at no point whatsoever did I say that the documents should not be published. Indeed, I made it clear on at least two occasions that I was perfectly happy to see the documents published provided the Foreign Ministries of China and the United Kingdom also agreed. I had no difficulty in coming to that decision because I don't believe that anybody should want to hide from the That after all. people of Hong Kong the debates about their future. is why I set out in public my proposals for the 1995 elections in my speech to the Legislative Council.

This morning the British Ambassador in Peking contacted the Foreign Ministry and the Hong Kong Macau Office to make it clear that we wished to publish all the exchanges that had been referred to by to do so this afternoon. the Chinese authorities and that we wished to do Accordingly, at 3.30 this afternoon we published exchanges between the

und Chinese and United Kingdom Foreign Ministers in 1990 accompanying papers.

I just want to say one thing about those documents. What they the future make abundantly plain is that there was no secret deal on political development of Hong Kong between the British Government and No secret, because you will see from the the Chinese Government.

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