The Chief Executive Mr Tung Chee Hwa has wrapped up his first official visit to the United States with a 'warm, cordial and very useful' meeting with US President Bill Clinton.

In the singularly most important meeting of his five-day visit, Mr Tung spent 40 minutes with Mr Clinton and key US advisers in the White House Oval Office.

Also present were Vice President Al Gore, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Acting Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, US Trade Representative Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, Assistant National Security Adviser Jeffrey Bader, US Consul-General in Hong Kong Richard Boucher and National Economic Council chairman Dan Tarullo.

Accompanying Mr Tung were the Secretary for Trade and Industry Miss Denise Yue, Hong Kong Commissioner, USA, Kenneth Pang and Mr Tung's private secretary Joshua Law.

During the meeting Mr Tung and President Clinton discussed Hong Kong's transition, the development of the 'one country, two systems' concept and how Hong Kong people had full confidence in moving forward within the framework of the Basic Law.

Mr Tung and the President spoke of the mutually beneficial Hong Kong-US relationship and how it continues to move forward in a constructive manner.

He told the President that Hong Kong would continue to live up to its international obligations in areas such as intellectual property rights, strengthening controls on trade in strategic commodities and the fight against drugs.

Moving ahead to strengthen bilateral economic, trade and investment ties were also touched on.

The importance of Hong Kong-US relations into the next century were discussed, with Mr Tung saying that 'we will do our utmost to make sure the relationship continues to be strong and viable'.

Mr Clinton's upcoming summit meeting with President Jiang Zemin was also discussed, with great importance placed on a constructive and long-term relationship between the two countries.

After the meeting, Mr Tung told reporters: "I emphasised our commitment to democracy and to the movement of political evolution as outlined in the Basic Law and how we will move forward in that manner.

"You know, we are very committed to democracy. It is very important in Hong Kong to move in this direction because it is in the long-term interests of Hong Kong.

"The importance of democracy is free speech, freedom of the press, the ability for political parties to organise, to debate openly. The importance of democracy is about the rule of law and we already have these fundamentals to push forward with democracy in Hong Kong.

"We also discussed generally the Asian-American relationship and we talked about the importance of a good Sino-US relationship. The President emphasised how important that relationship is to the world and I emphasised how important it was to Hong Kong.

"It was a very useful discussion."

Mr Tung flies back to New York from the US capital this afternoon before leaving for Hong Kong tonight.