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Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1A 2AH
RP Flower Esq
Head of Chancery
British High Commission
Kuala Lumpur
Telephone 01-
233 8631
Your reference
---Our reference
HKK 243/1
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51
14 SEP 1978
Date
14 September 1978
181
DESK OFFICER
IPA
REGITRY Action trên
INDEX
лю
হখ
MEETING ON INDO-CHINESE REFUGEES: KUALA LUMPUR, 20-21 SEPTEMBER
1. Further to my letter of 8 September, you will wish to know that the Minister at the Australian High Commission here has been in touch with us about the above meeting: I enclose a copy of his letter to me setting out the Australian attitude to the meeting.
2. I explained to Mr Mott that the UK had been invited "because of Hong Kong" and that our main objective, therefore, would be to see that the other participants were appraised of the real problems facing the colony as a result of the increased influx of "boat refugees" in Hong Kong in need of urgent resettlement opportunities and of Indo-Chinese' refugees admitted to the UK. I also referred to our open-ended commitment to accept responsibility for refugees rescued by UK registered shipping. As to the seven points the Australians want discussed at the meeting, I said these all appeared perfectly reasonable and sensible: the meeting was to be informal and exploratory in any case.
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On point seven "future action, including bilateral and multi-
It is not clear what the Australians are intending. As you know, we have made bilateral approaches to governments on a number of occasions when UK registered ships have been faced with difficulties over the landing of refugees rescued at sea. We should, however, wish to consider very carefully the issues at stake before joining in any multilateral approaches to governments. In any case, we would wish to avoid damaging the authority of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and to see responsibility for Indo-Chinese refugees wrested from his hands. Very often, high level approaches to Governmonta ký tho UNHOR CUH have lug gefiCRH EFTEFT #÷FAQUE directly involving other governments. Naturally UNHCR cannot operate without the co-operation of governments. If such co- operation is not forthcoming, then we would prefer to see the
lateral approaches to governments" we should be cautious.
/initiative
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