TNAG-0940-FCO40-1159-Visits-by-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Ministers-and-officials-t-1980 — Page 20

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certain reverend Fathers (Venet, Poncheaud), with private funding from France have been active among Khmer groups on the border, apparently on behalf of a grand coalition including Sihanouk, Mr Burns had already challenged his French opposite number on any official French involvement: M Perrin repeated his inevitable démenti during a somewhat languid post-lunch chat with me. I also received no reassurance that ASEAN in Bangkok had any ability to interact coherently as a group with the Thais: although the Singaporean number 2, Mr Tan, was predictably impressive as an individual, (with a touching (personal ?) hope that President-elect Reagan would reintroduce US influence in the region to help correct the present tilt), it was all too clear that beyond the irregular meetings of Ambassadors and the Political Director in the ASEAN Presidency capital, and ad hoc Senior officials meetings, there is no co-ordination of ASEAN policy. As a result further 'Mochtarisms' are fully

predictable: we should, said Tan, recognise them as evidence of the close and open relationships between ASEAN ministers and

not as proof of fissiparous tendencies.

Refugees

3. On refugees, I was most struck by the permanence which was being given to the two holding centres I visited at Kamput and Khao-i-Dang, where living conditions much more spacious than, eg. in the Kai Tak camps in Hong Kong, It was also interesting

to note US attempts to pressure the Thais to allow Cambodians from the holding centres to be resettled in large numbers: US off-take from Thailand is currently several thousand below target. UNHCR and the Thais tend to the view that other refugees of longer standing should be dealt with first, both to avoid too easy acceptance of the claim that eg. Laotians or boat people have a large number of inevitable residuals; and to prevent further creaming off of the Khmer élite,

4. I also had a reassuring session with Sir R Jackson's ; man on the spot, Mr van de Oord, who seemed sane and down to earth (as befits a civil engineer), and had a remarkably empty desk. It is a pity that we have had to wait so long to get

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