TNAG-0887-FCO40-1097-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 43

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would be up to him to determine the participants in such a conference. He could for example call on representatives from the formal and informal groupings in the UN as delegates on behalf of their groups eg the Nine, the Nordics, the Latin Americans and so on. Or he could invite all those states to whom he addressed his recent letter. There are many possible permutations. The object of such a conference would be to bring pressure to bear on various countries which have not so far done enough to accept more refugees and to raise finance in order to persuade those countries which would be prepared in principle to accept refugees but are short of the necessary money. Mr Hall

mentioned at this morning's meeting that this could be the case with certain Latin American countries. The obvious venue for such a conference would be Geneva so that the Secretary-General could act in tandem with the UNHCR,

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pressure on the

Tackling the second aspect of the problem Vietnamese is more difficult since it has strong political overtones. Dr Waldheim is a very cautious man and I doubt whether he would be prepared to convene such a conference without a mandate from a main organ of the UN.

The obvious body to do this is ECOSOC the summer meeting of which starts at the beginning of July. A possible scenario would be for a regional group, perhaps the Nine, to table a draft resolution in ECOSOC calling on the Secretary-General to convene a conference under his aegis to find a solution to the

Chinese problem of the exodus of people of various ethnic origin from Vietnam (the wording of such a resolution would obviously have to be carefully drafted). The resolution would have to go on to set out the participants in such a conference. A possible composition would be the Permanent Members of the Security Council, each of whom has a close interest in the problem, plus interested states in South East Asia including ASEAN plus, of course, Vietnam. The short term object of such a conference would be to bring the Vietnamese under pressure to call a halt to the current expulsions. The longer term object would be, at best, to persuade them to stop altogether; at worst, to produce a regulated flow.

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