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CONFIDENTIAL
RECREATION & CULTURE DEPARTMENT 1t #
HARBOUR CENTRE, 10TH FLOOR & 11TH FLOOR, 25 HARBOU ROAD, HONG KONG.
香港港灣道二十五號海港中心十樓及十一樓
CABLE ADDRESS I HKCULTREC
21 October 1983
Executive Committee Meeting (Excom)
of the United Nations Commission
for Refugees in Geneva 1983
App. A
-
I attended this conference from 5 14 October
as I did last year. Again I consider, as do the British Ambassador and the UNHCR, that it was right for the Hong Kong Government to be represented: partly for the negative reason that absence might well be interpreted as indifference but more importantly to find out the way UNHCR and the interested governments are thinking. Whilst I may have been able to get a few extra resettlement places for Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong, this should not be seen as the main purpose of attending Excom.
2.
The conference proper was preceded by sub- committee meetings dealing with such topics as Protection, Assistance, and Administration and Services. These were of very little interest to Hong Kong, the only excitement being over the text of a draft policy document on "armed attacks on refugee camps" a topic
ww
I hope will never be of direct interest to us!
3.
The conference itself started with the election of the new Chairman, Mr. Evalov, the Swedish Ambassador (who will undoubtedly be an improvement on his Lebanese predecessor), and was followed by the High Commissioner's opening address, copy at Appendix A. As you will see from the highlighted passages on pages 3, 10 & 11, Mr. Hartling put considerable stress not only on "durable solutions" but voluntary repatriation in particular. This anticipated the development of "voluntary repatriation" as the catch phrase of the conference.
CONFIDENTIAL
14.