ST Nash Esq
SEAD
FCO
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United Kingdom Mission
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Your reference
Our reference
PA Re of
CEZ 18/3
88
Date
13 March 1985
HOCK 243/5.
AECFIVEL 11.
Dear Stephen
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES:
"HONOLULU GROUP"
804
1. The Australian Deputy Permanent Representative, Michael Curtin, took me aside during the current Commission on Human Rights the other day to tell me about a meeting which the original four members of the "Honolulu Group" (US, Canada, Australia and Japan) had held in Geneva on 23 January.
2. Curtin apologised for not having put us in the picture earlier. He explained that, as Messrs Purcell and Dewey were both in Geneva for the informal Executive Committee meeting on 24 January, the US had decided to call a meeting of the four countries which had attended Honolulu plus UNHCR. Curtin said that nothing new had come out of the discussions. The four participants had each indicated their preoccupations and pointed to their priorities. They had decided to meet again at the end of May and to convene the wider group during the Executive Committee session in October.
3. Curtin's limited and tardy briefing comes as a direct result of my pointed comments to US and Australian colleagues that I had learned of the January meeting and wanted to know what was going on. I have said to both of them that we had thought that we were now members of the group as we had agreed to attend the meeting in Tokyo and had attended the Japanese lunch here which had replaced it.
4.
There is, I think, some embarrassment that we have found out about the January get-together. (I do not think the French or the FRG know of it.) I asked Curtin why he thought we had been excluded. He said that Australia's reading was that we had been reluctant to join the group in the first place. I explained that our absence at Honolulu was due to the fact that we had not been invited. But since then I had thought we had made it clear that we wished to be involved in the group's discussions. Hong Kong was, of course, a major interest for us and we would wish to be present rather than have the main resettlement countries discussing the issue, plus of course Hong Kong, in our 'absence.
ever
Yous
Brian
cc:
P Cole Esq, UND, FCO
B D Adams
Miss O Walker, Hong Kong Dept, FCO
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