}
UNCLASSIFIED
staying in the country of origin. It was important not to push off.
c) USA.
But
Ambassador Moore gave a major speech over lunch. His theme was that the main concern was to preserve first asylum.
he accented that new forms of humane deterrence were needed, including screening and temporary suspension of settlement
facilities for new arrivals. This speech has been separately
reported. A copy is attached.
There was an underlving assumption that the Democratic Party
was more sympathetic to refugees than the Republicans. There were
gasos of surprise when Dick Childress of the NSC expressed
President Reagan's concern for refugee problems. Congressman Solarz
and Senator Hatfield, both Democrats, spoke to the gallery and
received standing ovations. Hatfield rather irritatingly auoted
from a speculative press article which implied that Mrs Thatcher and
Sir Geoffrey Howe had agreed simply to repatriate new boat arrivals,
claiming that this was a British Government announcement.
Unfortunately there was no opportunity to correct this
misunderstanding in plenary.
d) Thailand. While Thailand received general praise for the
role it had played in giving first asylum to many hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees, there was a lot of criticism about the way in which they undertook screening, in particular along
the Lao border. There were suggestions of corruption and of a
secret policy of pushing back. An impressive participant in the
conference was Vitit Muntarbhorn, described as a professor from
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. He spoke at some length on the
importance of screening and on the difficulty of establishing
criteria other than the traditional one of fear of persecution.
arqued the importance of synchronisation with resettlement criteria.
He also argued the need for dialogue with countries of origin on
handling those who are screened out: this needed a carrot and stick
approach.
He
c.c. Mr Colvin
Dr Reilly
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