Central is a busy international, financial and commercial centre with limited spaces and the areas around the Legislative Council Building are small, making it impracticable to accommodate more than 10,000 people, Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations Lee Ming-kwai says.

Speaking at a press conference today, Mr Lee said it is Police policy to coordinate all public activities with a view to ensuring that they are conducted in a safe and orderly manner.

He said so far Police have received six notifications of staging public activities in the vicinity of the Legislative Council Building on July 9, adding that a "letter of no objection" has been issued to one of the organisations.

For the other five events, he said, Police are negotiating with the organisers on the arrangements.

Mr Lee noted that one of the organisations had informed Police on July 4 that the number of its participants would increase to 50,000 - 25 times more than the original estimate of 2,000.

The other organisations also intended to hold their public activities in the vicinity of the Legislative Council Building with the numbers of participants ranging from several hundreds to several thousands.

He said Police are negotiating with the organisers to see how they can make better use of the available spaces surrounding the Legislative Council Building to accommodate their requests.

"Up to now, we have been actively negotiating with the organisers and are quite positive that we would come to a solution later," he said.