TNAG-0587-FCO40-720-Aid-from-UK-for-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 160

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CON

CONF.DENTIAL

香港總督府

ie Matozzi

GOVERNMENT HOUSE ảnh ONG KONG

(139

as

REGISTRY NO 51

25 AUG 1976

HKK 243/548/1

Der Hugh,

123

140

dft

तिमीक

18th August 1976

Pue

24/2

Thank you for your letter of

4th August about the Vietnamese refugees on the AVA. This is all very sad. The refugees are happy, a principle of working routine has been established with the UNHCR and his representative, the Americans and Burmese have thanked the Hong Kong Government, the UNHCR's representative has been positively effusive ("if only other governments were as helpful as Hong Kong"), but once again we have failed in our relations with the UK.

I agree that we have been at fault. For instance the omission of thanks to the UK was deliberate in order to avoid comparisons with potential host governments. But this should at least have been explained, and in any case we could perfectly well have recorded thanks for diplomatic support. However the omission was intended for the best and was not a slight as you seem to have assumed.

There seems to have been some misunderstanding on points of fact:-

(a)

(b)

once we had said that in principle the refugees would be permitted to land, the rather remote danger of a general reaction of ships refusing to pick up refugees at sea ceased to exist indeed a Japanese ship picked some up in the course of the week before our refugees finally landed. Fears on this score do therefore seem to have been a bit far-fetched.

When we knew that the UNHCR representative had accepted responsibility and was definitely coming here to discharge it, we held our plans to house the refugees temporarily. The representative only arrived in Hong Kong on the Friday night and he subsequently decided to change the provisional arrange-

H. Cortazzi Esq., CMG

CONFIDENTIAL