TNAG-1419-FCO40-1902-Hong-Kong-Parliamentary-Sub-Committee-on-Race-Relations-and--1985 — Page 138

CONFIDENTIAL.

(a) the commitment

prepared to

is

weaker ("HMG are

in principle

"are

resettle" has been altered to

prepared to consider accepting");

(b) it is less specific on which

refugees might be

accepted, making no mention of the hard-to-resettle

cases (although this

is

not necessarily a

disadvantage: it would be better if the Home Office

took a few easy-to-resettle refugees than no hard-to-resettle cases);

at at

(c) the commitment, such as it is, is less

than we proposed (the re is n ow decision", implying

implying a single action).

continuing

reference to "a

D

6.

While this i s

disappointing, it is in no way

unexpected. The Home Office have at least moved from

the position which

which they

they maintained

for several months

that they would not even consider accepting any refugees

other than the family reunion cases.

7. The Home Office formula was sent to Hong Kong with

the caveat that FCO Ministers had taken по decision on

whether or not to accept it. On this basis the Governor

put it to EXCO on 27 August with the request that EXCO now respond to recommendation 5(iv) (which proposes that

Hong Kong

Kong accept for settlement

proportion of the ethnic Chinese refugees from open camps). EXCO did not object to

to the 5(iii) formula, but predictably offered a

matching (and thus similarly disappointing)

disappointing) response to 5(iv).

8. The disappointing Home Office formula for responding

to recommendation 5(iii) will make our

persuading other countries to accept more

refugees from Hong Kong Kong

extremely

difficult.

task of

Vietname se

But

the

CONFIDENTIAL