AGO (4)
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co-ordinating role in the repatriation exercise.
9.
This carries resource implications which would need to be
resolved with RMD urgently. Finance Department have calculated the
cost of a six month attachment to the Embassy at roughly £13,000, to
which the cost of salary would have to be added. But use of Embassy
staff would at best be a stop-gap measure: we would never be able to
deploy sufficient staff to provide adequate monitoring if people do
begin to return in the numbers we wish to see, and we would need to
hand over monitoring to an alternative organisation as soon as
could persuade them to undertake the work.
we
10. Secondment of a Hong Kong Officer: Hong Kong telno 2647 takes up the suggestion that an officer should be seconded to Hanoi from
Hong Kong. A possible candidate has been identified. We should
bear this in mind as a possible contribution, both to the
co-ordinating, and to the monitoring work of the Embassy. But as it
is the Hong Kong authorities who will be putting people onto
aircraft for Hanoi, and who are under the greatest pressure to
remove the population of boat people as early as possible, it might
be even harder to argue the impartiality of a Hong Kong based
officer if his work is to be primarily that of monitoring. We
should, if this option is pursued, look for a candidate who has a
track record of independence from the Hong Kong Government: a
retired magistrate, or someone along similar lines?
11. Resource implications for a Hong Kong based officer would be
similar to those given in para 14 for a UK based officer, except
that the Hong Kong Government would meet salary costs.
12. UNHCR: UNHCR would provide the most credible and internationally acceptable monitoring. They already have staff in place in Vietnam engaged in monitoring the conditions of those
who volunteer to return. It is likely that in many cases
non-volunteers would be returning to similar parts of the country.
It would make logistical sense if UNHCR were prepared to extend
their role to non-volunteers. Although the UNHCR's director for
Asia, Sergio Vieira de Mello, is generally sympathetic towards HMG's policy, High Commissioner. Hocke remains implacably opposed to