N.B.
CONFIDENTIAL
United Kingdom Mission
37-39 rue de Vermont 1211 Geneva 20
Telex 22956
Telegrams Prodrome Geneva
Telephone 34 38 00 33 23 85
T Trevan Esq
UND
FCO
HKK 243/3 243/3
23 JUL 1986
Dear Tim,
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
1.
ZGISTRY
Action Taken
امه
Your reference
Our reference
Date
An
Basta
127
& about I'd say.
Helpful
06 19:
pja!!
UN 243/1
ов
11 July 1986
ما
Rp! RTR with LUR (plash und
îf we dont have)
Please refer to your undated minute about Mr Gorman's call on you on 16 June.
2.
The Honolulu group consists of Australia, US, Canada and Japan, with UNHCR as observer. My Australian colleague tells me that the discussions in June were purely exploratory and came to no decisions.
3. The meeting focussed on the Ray Panel report which identified the problem as being the endless outflow from Vietnam, with lesser emphasis on the outflow from Laos and Cambodia. The meeting also covered the future of the Orderly Departure Programme (ODP).
4.
5.
The basic issues were identified as:-
a) the endless outflow from Vietnam (20,000 persons a year)
and, to a lesser extent, from Cambodia;
b)
c)
d)
the change over the last two or three years in the status of the persons leaving Vietnam in that the majority do not now meet the criteria of the Refugee Convention;
recognition that there was a limit to what the main traditional resettlement countries could do by way of accepting Vietnamese for resettlement; and
recognition that first-asylum countries could not be expected to accept persons who could not be resettled.
The meeting explored the possibility of a multilateral approach to Vietnam by the resettlement countries, first-asylum countries and UNHCR and recognised that this approach would have to bear in mind the importance of setting up a monitoring system to ensure that the returnees were not maltreated or discriminated against. The Australians feel that UNHCR hold a positive attitude to this approach, although UNHCR stress that it is essentially a political problem and is therefore for governments to solve, ie politics are frustrating an humanitarian situation. The Australians feel UNHCR would be prepared to take part in any joint effort that the governments concerned agreed
CONFIDENTIAL
/upon