May I correct two inaccuracies in Jonathan Braude's report on Sir Murray MacLehose's meeting with Deng Xiaoping in 1979 (Sunday Morning Post, May 18)? Firstly, I was not 'Secretary for Home Affairs in the MacLehose government' and have never claimed to be. The closest I got was to hold that post on two occasions when the incumbent was on leave. Secondly, I was not 'convinced that Lord MacLehose was right to raise the issue of the land leases' with Deng at the meeting.
What I, along with many others was convinced of in 1979 was that the PRC Government might be amenable to an offer by Britain to relinquish the sovereignty of the ceded territories of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon in 1997, along with the New Territories, but allow the Hong Kong Government to continue to administer the territory under overall Chinese supervision.
It was not an unreasonable assumption bearing in mind that for three decades China, in its own self interest, had gone out of its way to keep Hong Kong firmly under British rule, ignoring Nikita Khrushchev's taunts about Mao Zedong's tolerance of the colonial enclave and intervening to prevent local compatriots from trying to take it over in 1967.
JOHN WALDEN Pokfulam