ET1AND
CONFIDENTIAL
Recommendation 5:
(i)
Britain's willingness to relax its family reunion criteria
for Vietnamese in camps
in countries of temporary asylum
should be used as a bargaining counter to attract offers of
additional resettlement places from other countries.
(ii) The aim of such negotiations should be to reduce drastically the size of Hong Kong's Vietnamese refugee
population and to resettle all those whose stay in camp s has been prolonged.
In
1. HMG share the view of the Sub-Committee that acceptance of a
new intake of refugees from Hong Kong by Britain could evoke an
increased response from the major resettlement countries and
thus help to resolve Hong Kong's Vietnamese refugee problem.
their memorandum submitted to the Sub-Committee the FCO made
clear their belief that the effect of the UK accepting a further
quota might be to encourage other countries to take more. The re
obviously be no guarantee of this, but such a view would
se em to be supported, as the Sub-Committee's report notes, by
the responses from the United States Government and the
also that from the United
United Nations
Refugees (UNHCR).
Subsequent
can
Australian Government,
High Commissioner
an d
for
conversations with UNHCR
view.
representatives have reinforced this
2.
to take an additional
Our agreement
number of Vietnamese
refugees into the United Kingdom can clearly be used as an
argument to persuade other countries to make offers of additional
resettlement places. HMG do not underestimate the difficulties
of achieving such an outcome, since these countries do not owe us
any thing in this respect. Many countries have already assisted. generously with the resettlement of refugees from Hong Kong and
HMG and HKG are grateful for this help. The FCO will, however,
press other countries as actively as possible, both bilaterally
and multilaterally, in order to maximise the impact of our latest
In particular, approaches will be made to those
countries that already take large numbers of refugees
decision.
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CONFIDENTIAL