4
(b)
United States.
The U.S. mission this year was led by a Mr. Purcell, the most senior US civil servant dealing with refugees. Neither his general statement nor his one on Assistance were particularly remarkable. He did refer in both to voluntary repatriation but made it clear in the latter that he did not think voluntary repatriation of Vietnamese could be an option for some time.
(This, UNHCR officials told me, was because the U.S. did not want the Vietnamese Government to be allowed the Kudos they would gain from taking people back strange since they had talks
with them on how to improve ODP. In fact Purcell said that voluntary repatriation to Vietnam would have to be on three conditions - it would have to be genuinely voluntary, monitorable and monitored and the home government must not make political mileage out of it. All understood the reason for the last point but no one I spoke to though it was being realistic - the Vietnamese make much out of ODP. Interestingly, the Americans are apparently embarrassed because two Vietnamese resettled in the U.S. now want to return to Vietnam and the Vietnamese Government is prepared to accept them.).
All the UNHCR officials I consulted said that Purcell was the only one worth speaking to so I waited for the US/British bilateral before doing so. The British Ambassador led the British side and she gave me the floor quite early on and supported me strongly after I had spoken. I explained Hong Kong's present position, emphasising the hardcore of long stays and the problem of North Vietnamese. Purcell said he understood but that U.S. priorities were for ODP, clearing the Bataan backlog, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines! Hong Kong could not depend on the U.S. increasing its offtake next year and indeed might have to be prepared for it to be reduced. I said that this would be very difficult to accept. The U.S. had been good to Hong Kong so far and we had as they had asked last year now reached a stage where others were responsible for half the offtake. This latter point was said to be now not so important! What mattered was that other traditional resettlement countries should take up the burden and, although he did not say so explicitly, it was quite clear that he was referring to a renewed U.K. offtake : if U.K. took more so would the U.S. (Klaus Feldmann - the UNHCR Resettlement Chief later analysed next year's U.S. offtake as follows :
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/Target