TNAG-0496-FCO40-561-Deportation-of-foreign-nationals-from-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 39

CONFIDENTI AL

Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1A 2AL

JC W Bushell Esq CMG SAIGON

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Date

29 July 1974

1

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

1. Thank you for your letter 10/3 of 23 July. We are most appreciative of the way you have handled the ungrateful task of keeping the South Vietnamese up to the mark. Now that we have agreed on the wording of the "assurances" we hope the results of the court proceedings can be left to speak for themselves.

2. We quite agree with the lesson you draw from this case, that ideally we should get assurances in a form acceptable to ourselves agreed with the authorities concerned before repatriation. This is in effect what we thought we had done. It was only when spokesmen in Saigon appeared to be casting doubts on what we thought had been agreed that we felt it ncessary to get the record straight.

3. Apart from the Hong Kong angle to all this, I expect you will have realised that our Ministers have been taking a personal interest. They have attached the greatest importance to a defensible public position not least because of the considerable domestic criticism

see for instance the New Statesman article of 12 July). If we are not in a position to demonstrate quite clearly our good faith by quoting satisfactory assurances, it will be that much more difficult for Ministers to take the right decisions in future. Andrew Stuart has written to you separately (his letter of 26 July) about further information which Lord Goronwy-Roberts would like.

4. Incidentally, you may have noticed we have dropped 'innocent' (in the phrase 'innocent victims' the drawbacks of which you accurately point out!)

C W Squire

South East Asian Department

c.c."A.E. Donald Esq, Political Adviser, Hong Kong

CONFIDENTIAL