In a bid to end ongoing standoff, and saying that the public's desire for dialogue outweighed the students' disappointment over the proposed agenda, Hong Kong protest leaders agreed to hold two rounds of talks with the city's government.

The talks will start at 4 p.m. local time on Oct. 10, with the first session focusing on the constitutional basis for political-system changes and the second on legal requirements, according to the government and the students.

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The scenario raises the possibility that the government will not discuss making changes to rules laid down by Beijing requiring that all candidates for the position of the city's chief executive be reviewed by a committee.

As the demonstrators' core demand is for the 2017 elections to be more democratic, it may mean the discussions will make little progress and lead to further civil disobedience.

"The government has no sincerity," Lester Shum, vice secretary of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the main groups organizing the protest, said at a press briefing yesterday evening. The government has emphasized legal issues to rebuff demands for democracy, he said. "Political problems need to be resolved by political means," Shum added.

On Monday, a few hundred protesters remained at the sit-ins in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and across the harbor in Mong Kok.

Some schools in affected areas reopened and most people went back to work as normal. Civil servants were granted access to the Central Government Offices, which has been besieged by demonstrators since Sept. 27.

Lau Kong-wah, HK's undersecretary of constitutional affairs, said the entire process of the formal meeting will be open to media, and the two sides will determine the date for the second round of meeting after Friday's meeting.

In contrast, Shum urged the protesters to remain in the streets to put pressure on the government to make concessions, and said that any efforts to remove them or any failure to protect their safety will affect talks.

TagsHong Kong pro-democracy, protests, pro-democracy rally, Demonstrations