TNAG-0888-FCO40-1098-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 32

3.

The main aim of the conference should be to

infl hce various countries which have not so far

done enough to accept more refugees, and to raise

finance in order to help countries which would be

prepared in principle to take a quota but are short of

money (this could be the case for certain Latin

American countries).

4. Discussion can hardly take place without the

Vietnamese coming under pressure to moderate the

policies from which their Chinese community are being

forced to escape, and to regulate the flow of

æmigrants in concert with international resettlement

programmes. We do not intend to avoid this issue: it

is after all the fault of the Vietnamese Government

that the international community is faced by the

present appalling human problem. However we and

like-minded countries will need to ensure that the

discussion in the conference is practical, and faces

up to the urgent need:-

(a) to make a major resettlement effort based on

anything from a quarter of a million refugees (current, excluding China, where over 200,000

may or may not have been permanently resettled)

to over a million (possible); and

(b) to relieve pressure on the countries of refuge

(notably Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong) if possible

by political solutions but in any case by practical

help for the unshiftable surplus in camps.

Given these objectives, though we expect miniminal

cooperation from the Soviet Union and Vietnam we

should be able to avoid reaching the point of a

slanging match with the Soviet Union, or a filibuster

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their part.

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