CONFIDENTIAL
布政司署
香港下亞畢道
R
本署檔號
**** OUR REF.: SCR 1/4821/75
來函檔號 YOUR REF.:
P L O'Keeffe Esq CVO
30 JUN1975
NICK 8/ES
Hong Kong & Indian Ocean Dept
F CO
Dear Laurence,
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
LAST
220)
COLONIAL SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
25 June, 1975
ра
BD
(246)
A line to bring you up to date on how we are getting on with resettling our Vietnamese refugees.
2.
By tonight, about 850 will have left the camps for resettlement abroad or in Hong Kong.
3.
3/7
There is some hope at last of help from the United States. Bumgardner of the Task Force from Washington has just spent two days in Hong Kong when we had useful discussions with him. The Americans, as you know, have so far only taken 77 of the refugees but they should begin a quite large movement out in about two weeks' time.
As a result of our talks we are fairly hopeful that they will be able to take initially somewhere between 800 and 1,000.
4.
We are also expecting Ivor Jackson to arrive tomorrow when we shall make sure that he sees the camps quickly. You will be interested to know that we have now had about 18 enquiries from the Vietnamese refugees about repatriation to Vietnam. It is therefore most convenient that we shall be having Ivor Jackson on the scene and we will be discussing this matter with him.
5.
You may care to have a photocopy of the latest of our sitreps on the refugees which gives on the second page a breakdown of the numbers which have already been despatched to the various countries.
6.'
We are working on both the Austrians and the Danes and I hope that we shall be able to get a couple of hundred resettled in their countries. Here again, Ivor Jackson will be helpful, particularly in the case of the Austrians.
ever,
Yous
Alan.
(A E Donald)
C.S. 41A
CONFIDENTIAL