CODE 18.77
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Hoare
Hong Kong+General Dept
Reference........
pa.
FA 243/1
315
(3-6)
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES:
1.
OPPOSED TOWING OF CRAFT
I have no comments on Tipple's (DS5) letter of 14 December. His draft submission seems to have taken full account of this department's point about the Brunei precedent.
2.
+
However, as an outsider, it seems to me that the background passage (para 4 of the draft) does not make Hong Kong's and CAPIC's anxieties entirely clear. Presumably the contingency plan for opposed towing of craft is not merely against the day when the closed camps are full while the seasonal influx of small boats continues, but also incase, as I believe has been feared in the past, someone arranges for a large vessel with some hundreds of Vietnamese on board to sail for Hong Kong waters, or if some political disturbance in Vietnam were to provoke another large scale exodus as in 1978 and 79. I am sure this will not change our reluctance to countenance naval operations of this kind, but it would set the Secretary for Security's thinking in a more cogent context.
HKK 243/1
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51
10 JAN 1983
ཀ--
USTRY nation Taken
GB 10/1
Chakyan.
CM J Segar
South East Asian Dept
༣ :༥
20 December 1982
cc:
Mr Gregory-Hood Defence Department
CONFIDENTIAL
W 86A 233 5073