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returning to Vietnam.
The Americans have agreed to put pressure on
the UNHCR to do this during their counselling of boat people.
STRATEGY FOR SC3
11. Our objective should be to create a climate of opinion in
which it can be accepted that the orderly return of all
non-refugees, whether on a voluntary or non-voluntary basis, should
now proceed. We would make it clear that the voluntary programme
would not be abandoned. We can argue that the voluntary programme
has been given every chance to work, and that this should continue.
But although the number of volunteers is increasing, they are
clearly not going to match the number of those screened out, all of
whom will need to be repatriated.
12. The work programme of the Steering Committee (see paragraph above) includes a clear remit to examine and adopt by October 1989 such additional measures as may be called for to implement paragraph
12 of the CPA. At the second meeting of the Steering Committee,
held in Bangkok in July, these additional measures were further
defined. The Committee decided that such measures should include
(a)
the phased, orderly and monitored return and reintegration in safety and dignity of all those determined not to be refugees,
under the good offices of UNHCR.
(b) a regional holding centre of the kind envisaged in paragraph
14 of the CPA.
Building on this foundation, we should press for agreement to the
proposition that, in the absence of any possibility of a regional
holding centre being established, the only possible alternative
measure must be involuntary repatriation. If we achieve that, we
could plausibly argue when the first involuntary return from Hong
Kong takes place that we have merely anticipated implementation of
the CPA approach by a few months, which, given Hong Kong's special
circumstances (screening introduced more than a year before other
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