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carried through to its final solution because of the kind of international pressures which Patricia Penn was asking me about. So I don't suppose
I don't think its right to assume that the total ethnic Chinese minority is going to turn up on the shores of South East Asia. I'm sure they won't. The kind of estimate that was being handied about was altogether something about 800,000 that's including the 200,000 there already. But excluding the very different problem of Thailand which has land-crossers from IndoChina. This is different problem if only because many of them are not really for resettlement outside the region.
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worldwide one, bearing that in mind, do you feel about the countries such as Malaysia turning away Vietnamese refugees?
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Desperate people do desperate thing. They are able to turn people away because there are a lot of Indonesian islands to the south they can go to sort of beggar neighbour policy which I don't suppose they are particularly proud of but which, under the pressure they feel, they are adopting.
: This puts an added burden on Hong Kong?
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It puts an added burden certainly on Indonesia.
During your talks with Dr Waldheim did you discuss the venue of the U.N. conference or possibly the date?
Well, the general assumption seems to be mid-July. venue - well, there are various places suggested - think Geneva was the one most frequently suggested. But whether it would be there or not I don't know.
Was Hong Kong mentioned?
I must admit it wasn't, no.
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I think one wants to wait a little. These things can be highly seasonal and affected by quite temporary things. But I've always been confident that sooner or later the Chinese authorities would do what is necessary to restore the situation to normal. What has surprised me is how long they have taken to do it and I'm sure this is due to various extraneous events.
What are they?
All sorts of things liberalisation, certain confusion among cadres, and movement of the troops to Vietnam and now coming back again and so on.
Could you tell us Sir how you feel now at the end of all this about the outlook for Hong Kong regarding particularly Vietnamese refugees?
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