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