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CONFIDENTIAL
permanent local integration. Repatriation to Vietnam had to be seen against the overall political background. It would be very
difficult. Certain conditions would need to be fulfilled:
(i) returnees would have to be permitted to live wherever they liked
(eg, their own villages)
(ii) They should be allowed to lead as normal a life as possible in
the circumstances.
(iii) They should be given financial assistance to speed up reintegration into their communities.
With regard to condition (iii) above, M. Hocké said that this might
also mean doing more to help others in the same village, ie giving
some form of economic aid to Vietnam. He was aware that withdrawal
of aid had been used by some countries as a political weapon to put pressure on Vietnam to withdraw its forces from Cambodia. But UNHCR
could not make progress on the repatriation issue without some kind
of assurance from HMG and other resettlement countries that for
humanitarian reasons, some kind of limited assistance would be
forthcoming. Without this assistance, economic and military
pressure could result in Vietnam encouraging more people to leave,
because of the hard currency that refugees sent back. At present this was vital to the Vietnamese economy.
3. For the Cambodians, repatriation was a natural solution. UNHCR
were trying to initiate this on a limited scale. However, the same
conditions needed to be fulfilled as for the Vietnamese, and UNHCR
would need support for the initiative. They were now attempting to
isolate and return particular humanitarian cases, to show that some
movement was still possible after so many years. So far they had identified a number of elderly Cambodians from the Khao-i-Dang Camp
who wished to return to die in Cambodia, and Prince Sihanouk had
agreed to this. UNHCR's aim was to move gradually from repatriation
They would try to adopt a
of Cambodians and Lao, to Vietnamese.
global approach, in order to create a
to create a momentum which would
eventually enable all Indo-Chinese to return to their countries of
origin.
CONFIDENTIAL
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