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Following is the transcript (English portion) of the media stand-up session by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Donald Tsang, at the US State Department following his meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell today (September 19, Washington DC time):

Chief Secretary: Today, I met with Secretary of State Colin Powell. He has been most gracious. He flew back especially from Camp David to see me in the middle of a storm, and I was grateful for this.

But he mentioned that he was very pleased to see me because Hong Kong and the United States have a longstanding and productive relationship. And he was anxious to have an update from me.

My meeting with the Secretary of State went very well.

The Secretary of State was very positive about Hong Kong and I told him how remarkably Hong Kong has recovered from the SARS epidemic, and he was delighted to hear that, particularly about the recovery that is taking place.

We also touched on the implementation of Article 23 of the Basic Law concerning the protection of national security.

And he was delighted to hear that we have now withdrawn the bill from the legislative timetable and that we are going to consult widely and we have no timetable for enactment.

We also discussed the implementation of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle in Hong Kong and the Secretary of State was full of praise, saying how successful it has been since the handover in this regard.

I told him the Hong Kong SAR Government is totally committed to the protection of the rule of law, human rights and the full range of freedoms in Hong Kong.

And I told him that we are particularly proud of what happened on July 1 when our people demonstrated in a dignified manner and in a totally law abiding manner. Their attachment to the values that I mentioned: the values of freedom, human rights and the rule of law.

We also talked about other areas of cooperation, including counter-terrorist activities, container security initiatives, and in other matters. So it was on the whole, a very successful meeting.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)

End/Saturday, September 20, 2003

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