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CONFIDENTIAL
United Kingdom Mission
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Telegrams Prodrome Geneva
Telephone 34 38 00 33 23 85
Your reference
CA Leeks Esq
HKK 243/9
HKD
Our reference UN 243/1
RECLTY
FCO
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1 SEP :936
Date
25 August 1986
ti
INDE
ooon Taken
Jon Licks
UNHCR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (EXCOM) MEETING: OCTOBER 1986: RESETTLEMENT OF VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG
1.
I am reporting separately on a recent call I made on Messrs Hansson and Cooper of UNHCR's Resettlement Section in which we discussed specific issues of the resettlement programme for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.
2. During the meeting, and on their initiative, Messrs Hansson and Cooper raised the question of how the UK and UNHCR intended to handle the issue of Vietnamese refugees at the EXCOM meeting in October. They informed me that the High Commissioner had not yet come to a decision on the line to take at EXCOM, but Messrs Hansson and Cooper thought he would consider it difficult for UNHCR to make a similar appeal on behalf of Hong Kong to the appeal made at the 36th EXCOM last year.
This was in part due to the following changes which had taken place during 1986.
3.
(a)
(b)
(a)
(d)
The US position on accepting North Vietnamese refugees.
More resettlement countries were accepting refugees from closed camps in 1986 than previously when the ratio had been one in four refugees accepted from a closed camp.
Prospects for filling Hong Kong's 1986 offer for local settlement were not good: the question of local integration in Hong Kong needed to be reassessed.
Hong Kong no longer had the top position in the league of first asylum countries holding Vietnamese refugees: Malaysia had assumed this position with around 9,000 which could reach 10,000 by the end of 1986 as against Hong Kong's current 8,000 which could be reduced to 6,000 if resettlement offers materialised (but otherwise could increase almost to Malaysia's level as we mentioned in our telegram number 379).
issue
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I know that you are considering the line which the UK can take at the EXCOM on this
correspondence resting with our telegram number 476 refers- and we feel that you would like to be aware of the present thinking in UNHCR according to Resettlement Section.
CONFIDENTIAL
/The