Election date announced in Hong Kong

The Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-Hwa, has announced that the first general elections to the Legislative Council since the handover of the former colony from Britain to China will take place on the twenty-fourth of May.

But officials said a campaign to register voters for the elections had been disappointing.

More than one-million eligible voters out of a total of two-and-a-half million have not registered.

Twenty of the seats in the sixty-member legislature will be contested in the elections.

The remainder will be filled by appointment and by special interest groups.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service