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In the margins of UNHCR's Executive Committee in October, Purcell
of the State Department briefed UKMIS Geneva on the Honolulu meeting.
Consensus was that no single policy could remove the refugee burden but major resettlement states (Canada, Australia, USA - France was
absent) would sustain current levels of offtake while looking at
alternatives particularly repatriations and regional settlement.
Problems are that voluntary repatriations will be limited, forcible
repatriations out of the question short of a major change in Vietnamese
Government attitudes. Regional integration or settlement will be hard
to sell to first asylum states: the agreement at Geneva in July 1979
was that the region would offer first asylum in return for resettlement
in third countries. It will be hard to sell them any form of settlement
in the region. Hong Kong could certainly take no more than the 14,000
already there. At least substantial funding would be needed to make
this attractive to any of them.
10 A further meeting of resettlement states in Geneva proposed
consultations there (without formal UNHCR participation) to discuss
reactions to this summer's set of UNHCR's suggestions (which also cover
repatriation and regional self-sufficiency schemes''). It would be
useful if Funseth could confirm that US are happy for this group to pave the way for any ''Honolulu II''
''Honolulu II'', and suggest how and
when to include ASEAN states too. Unless Geneva talks prepare detailed
proposals for a follow-up conference to agree, we suspect that
attendance by Ministers would be hard to justify and would prefer
senior officials. But Douglas' Honolulu exercise is now regarded as
being partly for domestic sonsumption and he may be under similar
pressures next year to show that he is concerting refugee policy at
Ministerial level. So far only Tokyo has been mentioned as a possible
venue. Both France and FRG as well as ourselves are likely to be asked.
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