24314
the Qughtin thay I see with the saving rams please?
that HMA Washington 812%/ Ente
R+ Rhyme
Eta Mr Suitt told me that HMA Washington
on on 2 saving grams
have held
up
J
action
as a remet of tui meeting. They are awaiting
The go-ahead from CONFIDENTIAL
Since fur Palmeiri hes
seen both the Governor and his cortazzi I see
Сс
•
no point in our making Foreign and Commonwealth Office
a further approad in Washington. I you agree I wish so inform them.
auschend. Dorian
John Fretwell Esq CMG WASHINGTON
Əvvilianon
London SW1A 2AH
2112180
FA 243/30
RECEIVEL
, STEB WOJ
INDEX
HKGD
•
5 February 1980
UND
Subs
18/2
o Tiken
ра
Juridicam
252
INDO-CHINESE REFUGEES:
1.
CALL BY NEW US COORDINATOR
As foreshadowed in Hong Kong telegram number 225 (copy enclosed for those who have not seen it yet) Victor Palmieri, who replaced Dick Clark as US Coordinator for Refugee Affairs at the end of last November, called on me on 14 February.
He had just returned from a South East Asian tour (linked with a US Heads of Mission Conference in Singapore), and wished to share his "perspectives". We ranged over most aspects of the problem, including Cambodia and the emergency relief programme which also falls within his purview (as indeed does settlement within the US of refugees from the region).
2.
Palmieri seemed to have developed a very realistic (he used the word "apocalyptic") view of the problems. The West had done well, perhaps too well, in setting up arrangements to feed Cambodians and to decant out of Indo-China all the Vietnamese wished to be rid of. We would soon be facing calls for renewed pledges, but there was no sign of an end to the process,
and it would not be easy to maintain even present levels of commitment as the immediacy of 1979 fell away. The US 1980/81 budget contained $1.6 billion for refugee programmes and Cambodia, and they were still integrating 14,000 a month: even the US programme might soon fall apart. The West was baling the ocean with a spoon. We then reviewed possible responses to a picture I thought about right: I argued that the West had really no alternative to maintaining maximum political pressure on Vietnam, not least because any attempt to buy better Vietnamese behaviour through aid would require to be effective a volume of support which Western Governments would find politically (and economically) impossible to deliver. The means of exercising that pressure were certainly. limited, and Afghanistan had put an end to any attempts to produce results via Moscow: but we needed to try to reinforce the attitudes of the Japanese, the Indians and the ASEAN states. could hardly encourage the Chinese to teach the Vietnamese a second lesson.
CAMBODIA AND THE NEW PLEDGING CONFERENCE
We
3. We discussed Palmieri's thought that the coming (mid-March) meeting on Cambodian relief should in some way be widened to allow pressure to be exercised on the Vietnamese over boat
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