Registry
No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret,
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
DRAFT
letter
To: -
Charles Irving Esq MP
House of Commons LONDON SW1
Type 1 +
From
Mr Luard
Telephone No. Ext.
Department
DSR 11
In Confidence
Thank you for your letter of 16 January with which you
enclosed one from your constituent, Miss K Pollock of
Overton Park Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, about the
sad plight of the refugees from Vietnam.
I very much share your own and your constituent's concern
for these unfortunate people. So does the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees who is striving to find
solutions to the problem. I can assure you that the
Government, who give the High Commissioner their full support
are not blind to the refugees' fate. Neither is the High
Commissioner powerless. He has already achieved commendable
success in satisfactorily resettling tens of thousands of
Indo-Chinese refugees. His influence with many governments
is considerable. I do agree, however, that he needs much
more support from the international community as a whole
than he receives at present if he is effectively to deal
with this appalling refugee problem. We have ourselves
encouraged other governments to give him that support.
And we have left the Vietnamese Government in no doubt of
our abhorrence of their reprehensible internal policies
which are causing the exodus from that country.
For our part, we have already given asylum to some 1,400 refugees from South-East Asia, most of them Vietnamese.
And
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