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opinion here, it should not be pursued since not only would
the Vietnamese Government in our judgment be unwilling to accept the refugees but knowledge of it in Vietnam could lead
to a renewed exodus or tempt the Vietnamese to provoke one.
The High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur commented in his letter
of 14 January to Mr Donald that the Malaysians would probably
not be ready to take the lead in promoting the idea of
repatriation.
7. The option of 'humane deterrence' much advocated by the
Americans is also unacceptable for the reasons given in paragraph
8(e) of the letter. To keep the refugees in closed camps would be expensive and almost certainly ineffective.
8. The arguments in paragraph 8(d) of the letter against Hong Kong accepting now the 6000 or so hard core of difficult cases for resettlement are convincing. There can be little doubt that eventually Hong Kong will have to accept a large proportion of these people simply because noone will have them, but a decision to do so now would be premature. In the meantime we should draw UNHCR's attention to the problem and ask what they intend to do about them. We should at the same time ask UNHCR about the prospects for new resettlement outlets which is the option mentioned in paragraph 8(c) of the letter but this is unlikely to lead to any significant numbers of resettlement places.
9.
F
Hong Kong's second option paragraph 8(b) of the letter of seeking to obtain larger quotas from existing resettlement countries is the only option which could produce any real help for Hong Kong. The key country is the United States who have already taken 50,000 from Hong Kong but who have said their monthly quota from April to September will be 300 - 350 against estimated arrivals of 1,000. Since only an additional 200 are expected to be take off by all other resettlement countries, it
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