CONFIDENTIAL
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RECORD OF A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MR LUCE AND THE UN HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES, AT THE PALAIS DES NATIONS, GENEVA, 12 MARCH 1985
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Present:
Mr Luce
Mr Poul Hartling
Dame Anne Warburton
1. Mr Luce, referring to his conversation the previous
day with the Deputy High Commissioner on South East Asian
problems generally, explained that he wanted to consult
the High Commissioner particularly on the difficult
question of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. He outlined
the problem, with which Mr Hartling was personally very
familiar. He said that HMG would like to find a solution
which would empty the closed camps. The SCORRI report
might lead to the UK accepting approximately 500 from
these camps with relations in Britain: we recognized that
this would help other re-settlement countries to take more
themselves. But how could we prevent this being taken as
a signal for the renewal of the flow of boat people to
Hong Kong?
2. Mr Hartling embarked on a survey of the whole problem
of refugees designed to put the particular issue of the boat
people into perspective: they amounted to only 3% of the
global problem.
There are three alternative forms of
durable solution to the refugee problem: repatriation,
local settlement and resettlement in third countries. The
Vietnamese boat people are alone in having, broadly speaking,
only the third alternative open to them. Mr Hartling
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