We agree that RASRO's first year has been successful and warrants further British participation. I am therefore pleased to announce a new British quota of 150 places for the 1986/87 RASRO year. We could not, however, accept any amalgamation of the DISERO Scheme, in which we do not
participate, with RASRO.
The British Government continues to support UNHCR's Anti-Piracy Programe in Thailand. We have contributed £335,000 to date. In view of the recommendation of the Assessment Team that the Programme should be extended for at least one more year beyond June 1986, I am pleased to announce that we have just agreed a further British contribution of £70,000 for the 1986/87 Programme.
However, we share some of the concerns which have been
expressed about the Programme, in particular the need for improvements in the efficiency of the Programme and for more evidence on the fall or otherwise in the rate of piracy.
My Government endorses the recommendations of the Assessment Team. We hope that Thailand will agree to implement these. In particular, we are concerned at the continuing high rateof attacks on boats arriving on Thailand's southern coast (excluding oil rigs) and we hope that the Thai Government will focus on this area. We suggest that increased use of Songkhla as an operation centre might help.
Although the UNHCR statistics on the whole are encouraging, we are dismayed to see an upswing in the number of boat people classed as "missing", from 86 (2.7% of all refugees) in 1984 to 219 (6.1%) in 1985. We would appreciate any explanation that the High Commissioner can give of this and we suggest that the Governments participating in the scheme should consider
how best to tackle this problem.
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