Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has been taped telling business leaders last week that she wants to quit her post and now has “very limited” room to resolve the crisis engulfing the city and pressuring China, according to a Reuters report.

“If I have a choice,” Lam was cited as saying in English, “the first thing is to quit, having made a deep apology,” according to an audio recording of remarks made at a closed-door meeting with business representatives last week and obtained by Reuters.

Lam added that she had few options to resolve the crisis as the issue has been elevated “to a sort of sovereignty and security level, let alone in the midst of this sort of unprecedented tension between the two big economies in the world,” the news service said. A Lam spokesman declined to comment on her remarks to Reuters.

Hong Kong authorities are appealing for calm in the Asian financial center while warning that radical protesters showed “signs of terror” over the weekend in some of the most violent confrontations since unrest broke out three months ago.