24512
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SWIA 2AH
Euti
Daur Mikir,
18 August 1980
Yus
195
Vietnamese Refugees: MV 'Staffordshire'
The British owned and registered liquefied natural gas carrier, MV 'Staffordshire', arrived this morning in a Thai port with some 205 Vietnamese refugees on board. This is the largest number of refugees in a single rescue since last May: the average over the last 15 months has been 53.
The Government's policy in cases involving the rescue of Vietnamese refugees by British-registered vessels is, as you know, to make every effort to ensure that they can be landed at the first port of call without guarantee of resettie- ment in the United Kingdom. Our Embassy in Bangkok have ascertained over the weekend that the refugees will not be allowed. to land unless UNHCR can give a guarantee of resettlement in third countries within 45 days. This amounts to a request to the flag state for a guarantee that refugees for whom settlement elsewhere has not be arranged within a given period will be accepted by the flag state. It is more normal for the time period to be 90 days than 45 but in practice the effect of this shortening of timescale on numbers eventually resettled who
here may not be that great, since we would not expect candidates for any refugees elsewhere to be required to leave Thailand settlement
ليد
before
decisions had been taken by other possible resettlement countries, irrespective of the formal time limit. It is likely that a significant proportion of the refugees covered by the guarantee will be found resettlement elsewhere: any refugee brought to the United Kingdom as a result could of course be counted against our 10,000 quota. Their arrival at short notice wil1 result in the postponement of some arrivals from Hong Kong.
Provided the Home Secretary concurs, we recommend that our Embassy in Bangkok should be authorised to give the appropriate guarantee. We would also, however, instruct them to make clear that we consider that 45 days is too short to allow a serious exploration of resettlement opportunities in third countries: that we would not expect to be required to move refugees within the 45 day period who were still candidates for resettlement elsewhere, and that in general we would expect the time limit to be applied in a reasonable way. The Resident Clerk will be holding a telegram for despatch this evening.
You mentioned in your letter of 11 August about the refugees on the MV "Ben Dearg" that we seemed to be fast approaching the limit of the 10,000 quota. While I am not sure how close we actually are to filling the quota (our understanding is that some 6,060 refugees have so far arrived in the United Kingdom from Hong Kong under the quota: in recent months the average seems to have been about 600 a month), we agree
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