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Britain must take the lead in co-ordinating the international response to China’s efforts to impose draconian security laws in Hong Kong, seven former Conservative and Labour UK foreign secretaries have come together to declare.

The rare cross-party initiative reflects concern that the response to China cannot be left to US president, Donald Trump, and that Britain as a former colonial power has a special responsibility to take a lead. The seven, including former Conservative foreign secretaries William Hague, Malcolm Rifkind and Jeremy Hunt, want the UK to set up an international contact group similar to the one established during the Balkans crisis in the 1990s.

In a letter to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, they wrote: “When it comes to Hong Kong’s autonomy under the ‘one country, two systems’ model, many of our international partners continue to take their cue from the British government. I’m sure you would agree, as a co-signatory of the Sino-British joint declaration the UK must be seen to be leading and coordinating the international response to this crisis and ensuring the integrity of the treaty lodged at the United Nations in 1985 and one country, two systems.”

Trump has proposed holding a one-off summit on China in September involving leaders of the G7 nations, as well as Australia, Korea, India and Russia.

But there are tensions between the EU and the US over how to respond to China. Only one European country, Sweden, proposed sanctions at an EU foreign ministers meeting on Friday, the day Trump in a bellicose speech laid out plans for a raft of economic punishments against Beijing. A Trump-led response to China in Hong Kong, heavily influenced by Trump’s re-election plans, may only divide democracies opposed to what China is doing, some of the foreign secretaries fear.

The seven foreign secretaries, including Labour’s David Miliband, Margaret Beckett, Jack Straw and the former Labour peer David Owen, say the UK continues to have a moral and legal obligation to the people of Hong Kong, despite claims by the Chinese foreign ministry to the contrary.