CONFIDENTIAL.
(a) the commitment
prepared to
is
weaker ("HMG are
in principle
"are
resettle" has been altered to
prepared to consider accepting");
(b) it is less specific on which
refugees might be
accepted, making no mention of the hard-to-resettle
cases (although this
is
not necessarily a
disadvantage: it would be better if the Home Office
took a few easy-to-resettle refugees than no hard-to-resettle cases);
at at
(c) the commitment, such as it is, is less
than we proposed (the re is n ow decision", implying
implying a single action).
continuing
reference to "a
D
6.
While this i s
disappointing, it is in no way
unexpected. The Home Office have at least moved from
the position which
which they
they maintained
for several months
that they would not even consider accepting any refugees
other than the family reunion cases.
7. The Home Office formula was sent to Hong Kong with
the caveat that FCO Ministers had taken по decision on
whether or not to accept it. On this basis the Governor
put it to EXCO on 27 August with the request that EXCO now respond to recommendation 5(iv) (which proposes that
Hong Kong
Kong accept for settlement
proportion of the ethnic Chinese refugees from open camps). EXCO did not object to
to the 5(iii) formula, but predictably offered a
matching (and thus similarly disappointing)
disappointing) response to 5(iv).
8. The disappointing Home Office formula for responding
to recommendation 5(iii) will make our
persuading other countries to accept more
refugees from Hong Kong Kong
extremely
difficult.
task of
Vietname se
But
the
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