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policies elsewhere being rewarded, and whether they felt Hong Kong was being treated fairly in comparison with other South East Asian countries. It was essential that those in Hong Kong, and probably elsewhere as well, should know that the burden would be taken off them.
4. Mr Christopher asked whether we could expect the Vietnamese Government to do more to restrict the flow or whether we must simply accept the fact that ethnic Chinese were going to be expelled. What levers did we have over Vietnam? The Governor said that the Vietnamese were sensitive, to some extent, to ASEAN opinion and that of the Non- Aligned Movement. They also wanted aid and they wanted normalisation. Mr Christopher commented that, when Mr Vance had attempted to connect normalisation with the refugee problem, the Vietnamese response had been very tough and unforthcoming. They had placed the whole
blame on the wars with the United States and China.
5. In a discussion about the total size of the problem the Governor said there was a distinction between those who were temporary refugees and wished to return to their places of origin and those, including the boat people, who would never return. Mr Holbrooke agreed that many of those from Cambodia would want to return. Those of the hill tribes who had left Laos would go back only to fight and there was now an increasing number of lowland Lao leaving permanently.
Mr Christopher thought that out of the total of 320,000 refugees now in South East Asia some 300,000 would never go back to their places of origin.
UNHCR
He
6. Mr Holbrooke queried whether the UNHCR had done enough. thought they could be more active in Hong Kong. The Governor agreed that processing needed to be speeded up but said that the problem for UNHCR was that they were under-financed. Mr Oakley said that Mr Hartling now accepted that the de Haan agreement with Vietnam would only at best deal with the margins of the problem. There was a danger that the Vietnamese would seek to use it as a demon- stration that the UNHCR approved its attitude to refugees. Mr Hartling wanted to double the number of resettlement places. The Governor commented that it might be better to go for increased places placed over several years rather than attempt a sudden, massive, increase. But it was essential that if there were a phased programme of the sort, it should be clear to countries in the region that they had a firm guarantee that resettlement would continue.
International conference
7. Mr Holbrooke asked what the British position was on a conference. There had been three conferences on Vietnam so far and none had been very successful. It might be helpful to use the Tokyo summit.
Vietnam refugees had been put on the agenda for the heads of government lunch. He had also been encouraged by the news that Prime Minister Clark of Canada had said over the weekend that he was keen to take a major Canadian initiative on refugees before the Tokyo summit. The Governor said that, speaking personally, he thought there were two matters to be dealt with: one was resettlement and the other was political pressure on Vietnam. The second point might be dealt with at the same time as the first, but he was inclined to think that they were better separated. Mr Holbrooke agreed. As an example the Indonesians at the Jakarta conference had clearly not wished to condemn Vietnam. There was
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