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3. The High Commissioner referred to funding. Each refugee in SE Asia was costing $1 per day and he compared this to the $10 a day "pocket money" which the UK was said to be giving to each new arrival from the Sibonga. UNHCR was horrified by the way the Thais had been sending back refugees and was very grateful to the UK for the pressure it was exerting on Thailand to stop this, as exemplified by Mr Blaker's meeting with the Thai Ambassador in London. As regards family re-unification of Vietnamese, UNHCR was not an immigration office, but was acting the role of broker. He hoped that 2,500 refugees would be moved out in July under the new UNHCR arrangement with Vietnam. It was not his business to talk to the Vietnamese on the political level, but to be strictly humanitarian and non-political; he could never attribute blame.
4. Mr Hartling described the situation in the rest of the world. The 4m refugees in Africa cost UNHCR only $50-60million a year as against more than $100 million (ie half the budget) for the 300,000 refugees in SE Asia. This was because in Africa refugees were partially self-supporting. He referred to the explosive situation in Southern Africa; UNHCR's role in Uganda where the Secretary General had asked him to co-ordinate the first phase; the 1 million refugees in the Horn of Africa; the 150,000 refugees repatriated from Angola to Zaire by UNHCR last year; the situation in Nicaragua; the 100,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan, for whom UNHCR was about to launch a programme; the 200,000 refugees who had fled last year from Burma to Bangladesh, and whose return UNHCR had nearly completed.
5. Commenting on his consultations about a conference, he hoped to complete these in a few days; he had already approached 10 governments. It was important that fresh commitments for places and finance were forthcoming. If it was the wish of
governments to have both a humanitarian and a political conference he thought that UNHCR should only be associated with the humanitarian side. Could not the conference be divided into 2 parts?
6. Mr Blaker expressed his gratitude for this account and said that if HMG was for the present concentrating on SE Asia, it did not mean that the government was unaware of the other situations. He agreed with the High Commissioner's statement issued on 14 June which HMG was considering urgently, and pointed out that we had undertaken to accept all the refugees from the Sibonga and would be taking others from the Roachbank. The UK was particularly concerned about the numbers in Hong Kong which proportionately was receiving the greatest number in the region; one day last week Hong Kong hud received 3,000. although the average was 1,000 per day. There were 54,000 refugees in Hong Kong to date. Since other SE Asian countries were putting up the shutters, the refugees might turn to Hong Kong. Mr de Haan's family re-unification agreement was a good
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