CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Cortazzi
Cortazzi
@ 24/~
HKK 243
RECEIVEO
31 MAY
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News Dept
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UND HKGL
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES THE COMMERCIAL IMPLICATIONS
1.
The Director-General of the General Council of British
Shipping, Mr W P Shovelton, telephoned me this evening following up the telephone call which one of his staff made to the Department earlier this afternoon (see record attached).
2.
The
The Director-General appealed for a very early positive decision by the Government to take all the action necessary to enable the two ships 'Sibonga' and 'Roachbank' to unload their refugees in Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively. Both ships, as we would know, belong to Bank Line. Its parent company was Andrew Weir, whose Chairman, Lord Inverforth, would almost certainly make direct representations to Ministers tomorrow. whole problem was one which gave the GCBS great concern: these ships had been unlucky enough to come across boatloads of refugees at sea, had picked them up in the full tradition of sea rescue, but their owners were now likely to be forced into considerable loss. There was a serious risk that the ships, which were chartered to foreign interests, would be put off their time charters on the grounds that they could not work normally, ie because they could not enter ports and unload the refugees.
3.
Mr Shovelton hoped that the Government would take a favourable decision tomorrow, 25 May. I said that I would have to tell him frankly that the Government was unlikely to take a decision until well into next week. He expressed great concern and asked for the shipping anxieties to be conveyed immediately to Ministers. said he would also telephone the Home Office.
He
24 May 1979
CONFIDENTIAL
DF 'Murray