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5. The immediate difficulty will be Vietnamese ability to absorb
people back at such a rate. The voluntary programme has shown that with their present facilities they have problems absorbing as many
as 150 a month. Regardless of whether we look at volunteers or
non-volunteers, the next stage in our process of solving the boat
people problem should be to open a channel so that we can obtain a
realistic rate of flow into Vietnam.
6. This will require an approach to the Vietnamese to begin
improving their reception facilities. The first problem is the
slowness of their clearance procedures, which are carried out while
volunteers are still in Hong Kong. Coupled with the limited size of
the transit centre in Hanoi, the result is a long and dispiriting
wait for those who have volunteered to return: itself a strong
disincentive for more volunteers to come forward. The first
requirement would be to negotiate with the Vietnamese that they will
accept volunteers back immediately, for clearance in Vietnam, and
that they will establish transit facilities to enable this to be
done. I recommend that we should negotiate the establishment of
transit centres in Hanoi but also in Haiphong and QuangNing, and
other departure areas, from which it would be easier for people to be absorbed back into their villages.
7. The Vietnamese have made it clear that they are chary about
building transit centres for non-volunteers. If we wished to
persuade them on this basis, negotiations would probably carry a hefty price tag. But they are obliged to accept back volunteers, have repeated their willingness to do so, and in the Vietnam News
Agency release of this week, which caused such a furore, said that
...
"The Vietnamese side
believes that the best solution rests
with the principle of voluntariness and stands ready to work
with the parties concerned toward an appropriate solution based
on respect for humanitarian principles".
If we approached negotiations for transit centres in this spirit,
they would be less likely to refuse. (This view is reinforced by
C Telno 655, just in from Hanoi). And we could add the offer of
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