TNAG-1533-FCO40-2097-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-closed-camp-policy-1986 — Page 27

have done. In the light of this encouraging response, the Hong Kong government has also decided to resettle some 250 more refugees, drawn from among the longest stayers in the camps. These measures should help to ease the very difficult problem that Hong Kong continues to face.

Turning to the proposal in your letter that Vietnamese refugees currently in camps should be offered resettlement in Indonesia and the Philippines, I was interested to see how your thinking has evolved since your exchange of letters with Richard Luce during the summer before last. As our informal contacts at the time indicated, there are problems with the ideas you put forward. In addition to the points made by Richard Luce, you might welcome a few further observations.

The opposition of the ASEAN states on economic and security grounds to the idea of local integration for Indochinese is clearly stated and of long standing. What would be the legal status of the refugees in the two countries? If they were to be granted citizenship, there must be a danger that they would use their new passports to travel to join their relatives in the traditional resettlement countries. If not, I doubt that the Philippines and Indonesia would be receptive to the creation of a kind of isolation centre for stateless

persons.

The only real solution to the problem of Vietnamese refugees will, of course, come when the Vietnamese Government begins to fulfill its vital responsibility to its citizens, creating conditions of safety, justice and prosperity as the incentive for its people to remain in their country and for those who have fled to choose to return. We shall continue to work to this end.

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In the meantime, we shall take renewed informal soundings on the ideas set out in your letter. Given the enduring difficulties encountered in attempts to overcome the Vietnamese refugee problem in terms of the traditional durable solutions, I am grateful to you for sharing with us your thinking on this imaginative new way forward.

Что

Tim

Tim Renton