RESTRICTED
3
refugees were rescued from them. Attention was drawn to the fact that five merchant ships contacted by the reconnaissance aircraft (some of them operating under flags of convenience) ignored the efforts of the aircraft to direct them to distressed refugee boats even though they must at times have been within visual distance of boats. The US representative also quoted statistics indicating a decline in the number of boat refugees leaving Vietnam over the last few weeks, and expressed the view that all these facts put together did not support allegations of the "magnet effect" produced by Seventh Fleet rescue operations. He added that in 1979 only 2% (ie 4128) of the 182,000 boat refugees had been rescued at sea. Perhaps a distinction should be made between the "systematic" Seventh Fleet activity and the "active" Italian type of operation.
FINANCIAL DISINCENTIVES
6. The Dutch and Norwegian delegations expressed concern on behalf of their own and Greek ship-owners. The Norwegians, however, have created a government fund of Kroner 5 million to meet ship-owners' rescue costs and penalties incurred which they feel will be more than adequate for this year. thrée Norwegian ships had picked up 1900 refugees.
Eighty--
7.
Views were also expressed that flags of convenience ships would take on rescue operations if the risk of heavy financial losses could be met from an international fund. The Dutch suggested that a UN or UNHCR -administered fund should be set up for this purpose, but this was not supported by others, The UK said that there was as yet no hard evidence that British ship-owners and the Protection and Indemnity Clubs, in which they were entered and which at present were meeting their losses arising from rescue operations, saw the scale of losses incurred so far as something which could not be absorbed by the long-established mutual protection and indemnity arrangement. However, this was not to say that the P and I Clubs would not want to reconsider their position if loc203 increased as a result of a resurgence of the Vietnamese boat refugee problem. In any event, we did not favour the idea of a UNICR -administered fund and expressed the view that if the idea of a cost-sharing arrangement were to be pursued, it should be worked out and operated by the P and I community who possessed all the necessary expertise for dealing with claims of this kind.
AGENDA ITEM 4 (Landing and Resettlement Arrangements)
8. It was evident that the UK is now (with the flag of convenience countries) the only major maritime power not prepared to give a guarantee of permanent resettlement for refugees picked up by its flag ships. The obligations of
/countries
RESTRICTED
•
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.