TNAG-0877-FCO40-1087-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 55

separate copies to:

CONFIDENTIAL

Mr Smith SEAD

Mr Quantrill HK&GD

cc:

N.

Nacheren o.r.

ghali

Reference

Mr Weir Mr Murray

WIKIC 243/60

ir Simpson-0/eban RECEIVE

1 1 JAN 1979

54A

INDE

RE

RY

antion

en

INDO-CHINESE REFUGEES

1.

that:

No

Mr Head of the Ilome Office telephoned me today to say

a) After discussion with his Under-Secretary, official recommendations to the Home Secretary would be that he should not minute separately to the Prime Minister about the cloud on the horizon (paragraph 6 of my submission to PS/Mr Luard of 4 January) but instead should include mention of the point in his reply to Lr Owen, which he would copy to the Prime Minister and other Whitehall Ministers concerned. I raised no objection to this procedural point.

b) In response to further representations from Mr Butler of the Treasury, he proposed to delay the Home Secretary's reply to Dr Owen to give time for Treasury Ministers to react to the submission, which Mr Butler was putting up to him following our meeting yesterday. I opposed this, making particular play of the telegram received today from Hong Kong, which indicated that the luey Fong might have to move into territorial waters in the middle of next week, and that an announcement of what Britain was going to do to help might have to be made, for Hong Kong reasons, soon thereafter. Mr Head said that even with the delay now sought by Mr Butler, the Home Secretary might be in a position to reply to Dr Owen by late Wednesday. I doubted whether this would be good enough, especially since this time-table could so easily slip. I suggested that Home Office officials should proceed at once with their submission to their Ministers and that if Treasury Ministers did react to Mr Butler's report to them, this could be taken into account at the final stage. Mr Head said that he would speak to Mr Butler accordingly and on this basis we could probably expect the Home Secretary's reply to reach Dr Owen on Tuesday. I thought that was fair enough and thanked him.

c)

In discussions yesterday with the coordinator of the Voluntary Agencies concerned, it had become clear that they could accept refugees from the end of February, not 1 April as feared yesterday (last sentence of paragraph 5 of my submission).

d)

The Home Secretary would probably suggest in his reply to Dr Owen that the OCR machinery be used for the circulation of periodic reports on the dangers of an Indo-Chinese refugee problem, for Britain, arising on a large scale. He made it clear that he was not seeking my concurrence to this particular suggestion.

CODE 18 77

5 lamun EZ

1970

Martin Reith