TNAG-0974-FCO40-1193-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-in-other--1980 — Page 8

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RA

Minister (Economid)

CONFIDENTIAL

REGISTRY

"Action Tekad

British Embassy

53 Booh Friedrich Ebert-Attel 77

Telephone Bonn 234061

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I suggest we gove to Sin M. Machetne.

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Refents

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Sir Edward Youde KCMG MBE

DUSS

FCO

Lear Teddy,

Your referente

HKK 243 S

Our reference

KEIYEO 'N ROLLY NO,

1 AUG 1980 Date

VISK OFFICER

INDEX

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VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG

1.

PA

PISISTAY

JILB ANZE

You wrote to the Ambassador on 21 July.

243/1

29 July 1980

I am replying since he is out of town this week, and will be going on leave early next week after returning only very briefly to his desk.

2. Hong Kong's problems are a regular topic of conversation between this Embassy and the Auswärtiges Amt, and we are in no doubt that the Germans fully appreciate them. Our Consulates-General, too, have a standing brief to push Hong Kong's case with the Länder authorities whenever possible. Dr Karl Stumpf has paid two useful visits here and, with one or two exceptions, the press reporting of Hong Kong's problems has been both construtive and sympathetic.

3. We face two major difficulties, however, in pushing Hong Kong's case here. One of these you yourself mention: that the FRG's record in taking refugees from South East Asia is already significantly better than the UK's. This difficulty needs to be viewed in the con- text of an important strand in current Federal Government thinking: their pride in delivering what they pledge. They take great satis- faction, for example, in the fact that they quietly delivered up their athletes to the US-inspired Olympic boycott while other Western Governments (no names mentioned) shouted loudly and delivered no more than the odd fencer; we have heard Schmidt himself privately compare this achievement favourably to US failure to deliver ratification of SALT II after 6 years of negotiation. A variation of pledging what you deliver is practising what you preach; and German leaders in their present frame of mind are not likely to take kindly to being asked by us to do more than we are prepared to do ourselves. Moreover there are enough irritations in Anglo-German relations at the moment for it to be important not to add to the list.

4.

Secondly, immigration is currently headline news here - see the Ambassador's despatch of 24 July entitled "Immigration in the Federal Republic of Germany: The Gastarbeiter Problem". Reception facilities are under great pressure from a flood of refugees from Turkey, the Horn of Africa and South Asia who are ostensibly seeking political asylum. Since the Ambassador wrote to Alan Donald on 9 June a number of cities, including Frankfurt, have refused to accept any more refugees; and limited legislation aimed at speeding up the processing of applications for asylum very nearly failed to get through the Bundesrat earlier this month because a number of Opposition-ruled Länder felt that it did not go far enough to stem the flow of refugees.

/The

CONFIDENTIAL