ANNEX
RESTRICTED
STATEMENT MADE BY MR IFOR DAVIES IN THE GENERAL DEBATE OF THE · 27TH SESSION OF THE UNHCR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Mr Chairman,
1
It is a great pleasure for me to be able once again to . address this gathering, and it is my privilege to represent the UK.
May I first congratulate you, Sir, and the rapporteur on your election. I am delighted that a colleague from the EEC is occupying such an important post and that he represents a Government that has done so much to alleviate the suffering of refugees. I should also like to pay tribute once again to Ambassador Clark and his colleagues on the outgoing bureau for their efficiency last year.
My Government's confidence in the High Commissioner and his staff, together with our admiration for their work, is well known.
Indeed only recently it was possible for my authorities to display that confidence personally to the High Commissioner when he visited the United Kingdom. His visit was highly valued by the Ministers he met, including the Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, for Home Affairs and as I can personally testify his address to the Standing Conference of British Organisations for Aid to Refugees held in the House of Commons was an outstanding success and a moving occasion.
Mr Chairman, we have before us a very broad agenda. The Conference documents contain a great deal of material requiring our close attention. It is impossible and inappropriate to deal with all these topics in my statement today. The job of selecting subjects for special mention in the General Debate has been extremely difficult. My selection merely highlights some of the problems which my Government considers to be of crucial concern to this meeting.
I shall therefore try to say a few words about protection, about some groups of uprooted people the High Commissioner is helping, about the administration of his Office and finally about inter- agency co-ordination.
First of all, protection.
My Government accepts the creation of a Sub-Committee to examine this aspect of the High Commissioner's work. We have echoed the High Commissioner's words on many occasions in the past
RESTRICTED
/in