Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has been recorded 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 cited by 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.

In the audio recording, Lam said Beijing hadn’t imposed a deadline for ending the crisis ahead of National Day celebrations on Oct. 1. She said China has no plans to deploy the People’s Liberation Army on Hong Kong’s streets, amid concern it could lead to a military crackdown.

“They know that the price would be too huge to pay,” she said, adding that “they care about the country’s international profile.”

Lam also acknowledged her own role in the crisis, which started when her government attempted to introduce a now-shelved extradition bill. It was her initiative, she said, not Beijing’s, and her government wasn’t sensitive enough to grasp “this huge degree of fear and anxiety amongst people of Hong Kong vis-à-vis the mainland of China.”

“For a chief executive to have caused this huge havoc to Hong Kong is unforgivable,” she said.