LEADING liberals will be barred from sitting on the body preparing for the handover to China if they fail to rebuild mutual trust with China, claimed an influential adviser to Beijing.
Leung Chun-ying, a co-convenor of the political affairs sub-group of the Preliminary Working Committee (PWC) for the Special Administrative Region's (SAR) Preparatory Committee, also stressed that developing ''full democracy'' should be forgotten in the first two years after 1997.
A smooth transition should be the overriding consideration, he said.
He insisted that the PWC was merely a working body and not an ''all-party'' body. Whether it represented a cross-section of the community was not so important.
One of the major tasks of the PWC, comprising 30 mainlanders and 27 Hong Kong members, was to set up the SAR Preparatory Committee.
Mr Leung said it was ''impossible'' for some leading liberals to sit on the Preparatory Committee.