TNAG-0906-FCO40-1116-Immigration-from-China-to-Hong-Kong-1979 — Page 183

1

activities

-

we

2

-

New

are proposing to undertake in Washington, York and Geneva. In Washington, we saw the Acting Secretary of State

So Mr Vance was away when we arrived

we saw Mr Warren Christopher and Dick Clark whom you will remember is the Co-ordinator for Refugee Affairs who visited here 71⁄2 weeks ago, and Dick Holbrook who is the Assistant Under Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs and we had an extraordinary useful discussion with him. We were relieved to find the extent to which they had focussed on this problem. I think it's true that perhaps our visit coincided with a surge of new interest in the problem due to quite extraneous events. Nevertheless, it did mean that there was much more interest than might otherwise have been; consequently people wnated to hear what we had to say. And by the time we left there appeared to be whole-hearted support for a conference from the administration both personally from Mr Vance and from the President.

We also saw people on the Hill

-

Lester Wolff's Committee..

Congressional Committee on Pacific and Asian Affairs; Mrs Haltzman's sub-committee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs. And I think you will remember a member of that committee, Congressman Fish, who came here not very long ago. We also met Senator McGovern and Senator Javitts both of whom were obviously extremely

interested in this problem.

Now, from all these contacts it became clear that although until quite recently there had not been much interest in Washington in this refugee problem emanating from Vietnam, they had now focussed on it as a problem of worldwide significance about which really urgent action was necessary and which could only be tackled through the sort of conference proposed by Mrs Thatcher and taken up by Dr Waldheim.

So we went on to New York and saw Dr Waldheim and our Mission there. He is not in an easy position, he is a servant of the members of the United Nations but nevertheless his enthusiasm and commitment to the conference came through very clearly indeed. I think the words he used were "enthusiastic support". He is, of course,

a very experienced diplomat, realise: how important it is that when a conference is held it should be a success and therefore it should be prepared very carefully. And this is what he is engaged in doing now but I hope that some announcement will be made about a date of the conference fairly

soon.

In Geneva, our principal object was to meet our represen- tative there, Sir James Murray, and more particularly the U.N. High Commissioner, Poul Hartling, who of course I used to know when he was Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister in Denmark before I came here, and his senior staff. But before we Saw them we paid a courtesy call on the International Committee for European Migration (ICEM). I'm sure they are quite well-known to all of you. They've operated in Hong Kong with great success for many years have handled the transport side of migration from Hong Kong and are handling the transport side of resettlement of Vietnamese now. So it was a great pleasure to be able to thank the for what they have done.

and

/ contd