A PROVISIONAL legislature was the best way to avoid a legal vacuum after 1997, senior Chinese official Lu Ping said yesterday.
'We assumed there would be a through-train arrangement when we drafted the Basic Law. But it is impossible to have one now,' Mr Lu, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office Director, told a delegation from the Hong Kong Progressive Alliance.
The small pro-China group has received top-level treatment. It will meet President Jiang Zemin today.
Options other than a provisional legislature - such as empowering the National People's Congress, the chief executive or the Preparatory Committee to make laws - were not the best solution, he said.
However, the legislature's powers should be restricted to areas that had to be dealt with before the first post-1997 legislature was formed, he said.
