Petition will seek intervention to cover all applications made before court ruling

Top human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, may make a presentation to the United Nations next week in an attempt to press the Hong Kong Government to allow the thousands of abode seekers who lost in Thursday's court ruling to be allowed to stay in the SAR.

Lawyer Robert Brook, whose firm represented most of the 5,114 applicants in the landmark case, said Mr Robertson would be acting for free.

Mr Brook said it had not yet been decided whether Mr Robertson - one of the lawyers who represented the applicants during the case - or other delegates would petition the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in person at Mr Annan's office in Geneva, Switzerland.

The legal team has proposed urging the Secretary-General to ask the Hong Kong Government to allow all claimants who had filed abode claims before Thursday's rulings to remain in the SAR. Such a plea would group thousands of other applicants with those who lost in this week's case.

If Mr Annan agreed to the request, he would make a diplomatic representation, probably through Beijing, to Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa for consideration, Mr Brook said.

'Mr Robertson is very concerned about the top court's decisions that the applicants were found to have a legitimate expectation that they would be treated the same way as those who were named as parties in the January 1999 rulings,' the lawyer said.

The January 1999 rulings by the Court of Final Appeal went in favour of abode seekers. 'If the Government ignores the request, it would be open to criticism in the United Nations,' Mr Brook said.