A draft agreement on mutual judicial help between the SAR and the mainland has been handed to Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie for her comments.
Shao Wenhong, a judge and deputy research director of the Supreme People's Court, said yesterday that the initial document covered four areas of judicial assistance.
They were: the delivery of judicial documents; the giving of evidence by residents of one area in another's courts; recognition and implementation of rulings in the other jurisdiction; and the recognition and implementation of arbitration.
Ms Shao said the mainland authorities and their SAR counterparts had been dealing with the post-handover cases for both jurisdictions on a case-by-case basis.
This was because the pre-handover agreement between the mainland and Hong Kong, extended by Britain to the former territory, ceased after the handover.
'We face difficulty now in the sense that we have to negotiate on the cases individually because of the lack of an overall agreement,' she said, stressing that the mainland authorities would like to see an early solution.
