this: no debt Marine Division of the Department of Trade will
provide chapter and verse. Depending on their further
advice, you may wish to consider to what extent we should be
prepared to give guarantees to third countries on behalf of
our overseas territories. Clearly, we should not wish to
provide guarantees to any countries without first exploring
the possibility of having the refugees landed on the basis of
the undertaking usually provided by UNHCR. If the UNHCR under
taking is unacceptable to a third country we should, as we have
done in the past, wish to consider bilateral action which may be
appropriate such as representations: these have been successfull
on a number of occasions. In other words, any guarantee should be
given as a last resort. Where we provide an undertaking on
behalf of one of our overseas territories, if you decide to
recommend this, we would try to ensure that the territory
1
**73
XIX.
itself should accept the refugees if this were possible,
in this way extending the time available to UNHCR for finding
**
places of permanent settlement for the refugees and thereby
#
reducing still further the chances of any refugees picked up
by ships registered in ports of our overseas territories,
}
13
ribi
eventually coming to the UK. These points may be worth including
in your draft submission.
4. There is also the question of British-owned vessels of
foreign registration. Sometimes these vessels have a much
closer connection with the UK than with the country of
>
registration. Under the arrangements proposed in your
draft, we would have no authority to provide guarantees in cases like these.
Conversely, there may be ships which are UK registered but
foreign owned and which have no connection with the UK, apart
from their registration, on whose behalf we would be
adyob 9.
?..
RESTRICTED
{
/expected