TNAG-0882-FCO40-1092-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 16

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28 February 1979

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THE NEW ZEALAND PROGRAMME

You will no doubt have seen the Reuters report of 27 February from Kuala Lumpur of the New Zealand High Commissioner's statement that New Zealand will take 900 refugees from Thailand and Malaysia this year and expects to resettle more than 1500 Indo-Chinese refugees by the end of March 1980.

2.

I discussed this today with the Acting New Zealand Trade Commissioner here emphasising our hope that a reasonable number of resettlement places in New Zealand will be made available to refugees in Hong Kong. Jeffries, who recently came here from Bangkok, told me that discussions had been going on with the Thais and Malaysian: Governments since about June last year (before Hong Kong's refugee problem started to assume its current dismaying proportions). He was afraid that most of the 900 places were already committed. However, he undertook to find out whether any of the remainder could be made available for Hong Kong and to transmit our latest figures by telegram to his Commissioner, who is at present in Wellington returning here on 12 March.

3.

We shall be grateful for anything that you, or Wellington, can do to persuade New Zealand to take significant numbers from Hong Kong. We may have a chance to put the point to members of a New Zealand refugee selection team who are expected shortly to be briefly in Hong Kong on their way back from Thailand and Malaysia. We understand that most of the refugees will be transitting Hong Kong on their way to New Zealand and we have already made the obvious point that the press here are likely to ask why the New Zealand

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