HOME OFFICE
QUEEN ANNE'S GATE LONDON SW1H 9AT
18 June 1979
1
HAH Cortazzi Esq CMG Foreign & Commonwealth Office Downing Street
LONDON SW1
Kein Hugh,
The Home Secretary was glad to learn that the Prime Minister had agreed that the request conveyed in Bryan Cartledge's letter of 14 June for advice on a number of questions about the Vietnamese refugee problem should be deferred until we see what transpires at Mr Blaker's meeting in Geneva to-day with Mr Hartling.
In the meantime the Home Secretary has asked me to let you have his preliminary view on what the UK stance might be at an international conference to find a solution to the Vietnamese refugee problem, if one is eventually held.
First, Mr Whitelaw recognises the potential difficulty, whic has been mentioned in some reporting telegrams and which was also put to him by the Governor of Hong Kong during his visit last wee of convening a conference designed both to bring international pressure to bear on Vietnam and to deal with the enormous problem created by the brutal behaviour of the Vietnamese authorities. Nevertheless he regards it as essential that, whether within the conference, or on the margins of it or by some other means, the behaviour of the Vietnamese should be exposed as fully as possibl otherwise we shall find ourselves tacitly accepting that other countries simply accept the responsibility for the consequences of their behaviour.
As to the problem of the refugees themselves, the United kingdom, having taken the initiative in calling for an internatio conference, can hardly go into it with no contribution, however modest, to the resettlement of the refugees. But first of all w must make it plain that we have already had to make a contributio over and above the quota of 1,500 which the previous Government had agreed to accept at the request of the UNIICR because of the collapse of the international practice, generally observed until recently, that people rescued from distress at sea should be allowed to disembark at the ship's next port of call. We do not want, however, to agree to the abandonment of this practice even though it is unrealistic to suppose that at this conference it could be effectively reinstated: Taiwan, which has given us trouble, will not be at the conference anyway and the other countries in the South China Sea would almost certainly not agree to accept next port of call refugees without inducements much
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