CONFIDENTIAL
of negotiations with Vietnam to reguleries the flow.of. refugees and also of the application of political and economic pressure to ensure this (as well as the return of refugees to Cambodia). Above all they do not want the situa tion to drift Chere they would point to the lack of results after the UNHCR meeting in Geneva in December 1978 and the island processing centre meeting in Jakarta in May 19791.
(b) As stated above, Singapore is likely to take a strong line but one more openly critical of the Vietnamese Government for its conscious policy of expelling all the ethnic Chinese. She is likely to be sceptical of efforts by the international community to organise an orderly exodus since, in the view of the Singapore Government, this would only encourage the Vietnamese authorities to expel more people Singapore maintains that the problem is political rather than humanitarian, and the actions of the Vietnamese Government represent a threat to the stability of the whole of South East Asia. Rajaratnam said at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers meeting in Bali, "ASEAN has to stand up to Vietnam or be rolled over".
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To meet the current crisis, Singapore has put forward a six-point programme:-
1) The Vietnamese should agree that } initially resettlement should be confined to refugees already marooned in islands. territories and boats outside Vietnam; 2) They should therefore "suspend" their offer to the. UNHCR to send out 10,000 refugees a month";
3) They should undertake not to export. any more of their nationals by sea or land; 4) The Vietnamese Government should promise to take back any refugees who escaped their security network;
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5) To this end, and our auth koopi the Vietnamese Government should not
aside suitable areas for those Vietnamese who wanted to leave Vietnam, the world community to feed, clothe took after them while they were in Vietnam!
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