THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
            (Hong Kong Special Administration Region)
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                July 3, 1998


                             REMARKS BY
            SANDY BERGER, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
              FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS,
                AND PRESS SECRETARY MIKE MCCURRY
                           TO THE POOL

                      The Grand Hyatt Hotel
            (Hong Kong Special Administration Region)


12:11 P.M. (L)

     MR. BERGER: We just had a very good meeting -- the President 
just had a very good meeting with Martin Lee.  It lasted about 15 
or 20 minutes.  Mr. Lee started by expressing his gratitude to 
the President for, A, coming to China; B, for what he said while 
he was in China, to the Chinese people; and, C, for the remarks 
that he made this morning about Hong Kong and the importance of 
increasing democracy here.

     He talked about the Asian financial situation and said that 
what is critical, from his point of view, is that there be, 
through this period, a democratic base put underneath any kind of 
economic reform; and the lack of a democratic base in his 
judgment has contributed to the economic problems.  

     He suggested that the first year since the reversion has 
gone well, from a perspective of civil liberties and democracy.  
He obviously believes that the process of democratic elections 
should be accelerated, that's his view of that.  The President 
and he talked about changes taking place in China, the 
relationship of Hong Kong to those changes.  As the President 
said in his speech, Hong Kong can be a window of the world from 
and to China.  Mr. Lee indicated that Hong Kong can also be, in a 
sense, a laboratory for democracy for China -- that was not a 
quote, that was a characterization.

     Q:  What did the President say to him when he mentioned that 
the process of democratic election should be accelerate?  Did the 
President agree?

     MR. BERGER:  The President said what he indicated in his 
speech this morning, that there ought to be more democracy in 
Hong Kong, not less.  I don't think it's for us to be expressing 
-- to get into the specifics of what the time table of that might 
be.  But they've taken an important first step with the elections 
for the new legislative council, a third of which are directly 
elected.  Mr. Lee would like to see that number increased and 
that process speed up.  Ultimately that's for the people of China 
and Hong Kong to resolve.  But I think the President expressed 
the overall sentiment that more democracy, not less, will be good 
for Hong Kong, good for China.  

     Q:  Sandy, did the President or Martin Lee talk about any 
specific civil liberties concerns in Hong Kong since the hand 
over?

     MR. BERGER:  No.  He said that he thought in that respect 
things had gone quite well.

     Q:  "He," meaning Martin Lee said --

     MR. BERGER:  Yes.  And he said, you know, there have been a 
few problems here and there, but we don't need to go into that 
today.  He was quite -- you need to catch up with Mr. Lee during 
the day, I think, so that he can characterize his own views.  But 
I thought, having met with him on innumerable occasions in the 
past, he certainly felt very positive about what's happened over 
the last week.

     Q:  Did you have to get permission from the Chinese 
government to meet with Mr. Lee, or how did you finesse that?

     MR. BERGER:  No.  No, we neither sought nor, I think, needed 
permission to meet with Mr. Lee, or this group of people who are 
now meeting with the President, which is kind of an aggregation 
of people from the judiciary, people from the bar association, 
people from civil society here in Hong Kong.  So there was no 
need or certainly no request for permission.

     Q:  Lee was complaining earlier today, or I believe I saw 
him saying that -- complaining about the coverage arrangements, 
or that he didn't want this to be a secret meeting.  Was that 
brought up at all and how did you guys decide to do what you did 
with us, in terms of coverage?

     MR. BERGER:  Well, I'm not sure whether he knew what the 
plans were.  I mean, I think he's quite satisfied with the way 
that it's gone.  We just had a pool spray, we had pictures taken 
when he was with the President.  So I would imagine he's quite 
satisfied by that.  

     Q:  Why did you change your coverage plans?  At first there 
was to be none of this. 

     MR. BERGER:  You know, McCurry mixed it up every morning.  
(Laughter.)

     MR. MCCURRY:  That's literally what happened.

     Q:  Why did you change the coverage plan?

     MR. MCCURRY:  Because there was no point in making an issue 
out of something that wasn't an issue.  I think the only concern 
we had was to demonstrate that there is a wide cross section of 
democratic voices in opposition and we're having an opportunity 
to see a lot of that cross section here and we didn't want to 
single out any one individual in what is a much more vibrant 
movement.  And that was the recommendation of Ambassador Boucher, 
who I trust with my life.

     MR. BERGER:  Counsel General Boucher.  

     MR. MCCURRY:  Counsel General Boucher.

     MR. BERGER:  Let me just emphasize what Mike said.  We put 
together the schedule, there's obviously time constraints that go 
into how you put it together.  It was nothing -- there's no 
message intended by the way it was set up; but as it became a 
question, we just wanted to make sure it was not an issue.

     Q:  Thank you very much.

END                 12:17 P.M. (L)

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