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Ref:
Lord Ennals
Chairman
Asia Committee
The British Refugee Council
Bondway House
3/9 Bondway
LONDON SW8 1SJ
PAPUA NEW GUINEA HIGH COMMISSION
14 Waterloo Place
London SW1R 4AR
20 February 1985
Dear Lord Ennals,
I refer to your letter of 7 February 1985 (received at this mission on 12 February) and regret that I was unable to communicate with you at all in relation to your letter of 12 June 1984. Despite a thorough examination of our records, this Mission is not in possession of the earlier letter.
Nevertheless, may I stress that this Mission does its utmost to attend to enquiries about Papua New Guinea or particularly the common land border with Indonesia (Irian Jaya) and the intermittent problem of the movement of people from Irian Jaya into Papua New Guinea territory. Our aim in responding to such enquiries on the border and the influx of border crosses is to ensure that the views and position of the Papua New Guinea Government are presented correctly and in a balanced way in the face of undue controversy. The record of my Government's handling of the situation, in particular the outflow of border crosses at times in large numbers, speaks for itself since Papua New Guinea became an independent state with its own democratic institutions.
Let me emphasise that the influx of the 7-thousand or more people from Irian Jaya into our territory since last February was not the result of actions by the Papua New Guinea Government. Therefore events in Irian Jaya have an impact on Papua New Guinea. Quite understandably, the people and government of Papua New Guinea have been and are concerned (and the Government's concern has been
restated to the Indonesian Government on a number of occasions) over the large number of border crossers scattered in more than a dozen or so hamlets and villages in the most difficult terrain of Papua New Guinea.
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