Students and Hong Kong government reach breakthrough on talks to end Occupy Central stand-off

Students at the forefront of the pro-democracy protests that have swept the city have agreed to hold talks with top government officials including Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Friday to find a solution to the political impasse.

The agreement was reached after preliminary talks between the Federation of Students and Undersecretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Lau Kong-wah.

Lau said Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam Chi-yuen would join Lam at the talks, which are scheduled to start at 4pm on Friday. Media coverage will be allowed, though the meeting will be closed to the public. The venue for the meeting is yet to be decided.

Despite the talks, Federation of Students' deputy leader Lester Shum said the protests would continue until there were clear signs of progress.

Shum also warned that the dialogue would end if the government took action to clear the protest sites or failed to guarantee the safety of the demonstrators, who are demanding a reversal of Beijing's decision to impose a restrictive framework for the 2017 chief executive election. They also want Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to resign, a move that Leung has repeatedly ruled out.

Shum was disappointed that the agenda for Friday's meeting would not directly address their core demands: genuine universal suffrage and public nomination of chief executive candidates.