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As a result of the initiatives taken at the Geneva
meeting on Indochinese refugees in July, the immediate
refugee situation in Southeast Asia is fortunately somewhat
less desperate and unstable. Vietnam has apparently used
its domestic authority to curb a great part of its refugee
exodus. With declining arrival rates and accelerated
departure rates for resettlement countries, the refugee
population has been reduced somewhat, and new arrivals are
generally receiving asylum.
Despite this hiatus, however, the underlying problems
remain volatile. The clear potential for a return to a
crisis situation makes it imperative to move ahead with the
commitments we have already made, and indeed to look for
longer term solutions. Let me outline some of our concerns
about the situation, as well as steps we have taken since
the Geneva meeting in July and our plans for future action.
The United States is concerned about several persistent
and potentially troublesome problems. First, despite the
recent decrease in new arrivals and increase in departures
for resettlement countries, the total number of refugees
in Southeast Asia remains dangerously high. The presence
of large refugee populations continues to strain the resources
of countries of first asylum. In the past, this has led,
as we all know too well, to erosion of the principles of first
asylum and loss of lives of refugees turned back across land
borders or pushed back out to sea. It is encouraging that
first asylum generally seems to have been restored, although
we particularly deplore that a few have been pushed back.
Furthermore, we have no guarantee that the arrival rates