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been agreed with the Vietnamese and to be frank about our desire to
ensure effective monitoring, appealing to them for help and advice.
If they were willing to make someone available, either on a
semi-permanent attachment or ad hoc (see para 18) basis, we would
need to be in a position to discuss HMG's willingness to help fund
their activities. We would need to assure them that notwithstanding any financial involvement on our part, their independence and the impartiality of their own reporting would be fully respected.
17. ICM: We might also approach the ICM to see if they would be
willing to undertake a monitoring role. Preliminary contacts
suggest that they would be reluctant, but might be open to persuasion.
18. Independent Consultants: We are seeking advice from the ODA
on the possibility of employing an independent consultant to
undertake monitoring work. ODA budget around £600-£700 per day for
highly qualified full-time experts engaged in other specialised
consultancy work. But the overall costs could be kept down for a
relatively simple monitoring job if such a consultant were to
operate on a temporary but regular visiting (see para 18) basis.
might also seek the advice of NGOs on recruitment of possible
candidates.
We
19. Whether we decide to go ahead with an NGO representative or an
independent consultant one problem will be finding a candidate who
speaks adequate Vietnamese: but since much about the conditions of
those back in Vietnam will be immediately observable, this is not an
over-riding consideration.
The Monitoring Operation
20. We would need to consider whether monitoring should in the first
instance be carried out by a full-time resident in Vietnam, or
whether, bearing in mind the small number planned for the first
group, it could be undertaken by a plan of scheduled visits by staff
based outside Hanoi. This could help to keep costs down, but would
only be a temporary arrangement until the repatriation programme
gets sufficiently underway to call for a full time monitoring