TNAG-1537-FCO40-2101-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-resettlement-in-third-countri-1986 — Page 166

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CONFIDENTIAL

United Kingdom Mission

37-39 rue de Vermont 1211 Geneva 20

Telex 22956

Telegrams Prodrome Geneva

Telephone 34 38 00 33 23 85

Your reference

CA Leeks Esq

HKK 243/9

HKD

Our reference UN 243/1

RECLTY

FCO

-

1 SEP :936

Date

25 August 1986

ti

INDE

ooon Taken

Jon Licks

UNHCR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (EXCOM) MEETING: OCTOBER 1986: RESETTLEMENT OF VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG

1.

I am reporting separately on a recent call I made on Messrs Hansson and Cooper of UNHCR's Resettlement Section in which we discussed specific issues of the resettlement programme for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.

2. During the meeting, and on their initiative, Messrs Hansson and Cooper raised the question of how the UK and UNHCR intended to handle the issue of Vietnamese refugees at the EXCOM meeting in October. They informed me that the High Commissioner had not yet come to a decision on the line to take at EXCOM, but Messrs Hansson and Cooper thought he would consider it difficult for UNHCR to make a similar appeal on behalf of Hong Kong to the appeal made at the 36th EXCOM last year.

This was in part due to the following changes which had taken place during 1986.

3.

(a)

(b)

(a)

(d)

The US position on accepting North Vietnamese refugees.

More resettlement countries were accepting refugees from closed camps in 1986 than previously when the ratio had been one in four refugees accepted from a closed camp.

Prospects for filling Hong Kong's 1986 offer for local settlement were not good: the question of local integration in Hong Kong needed to be reassessed.

Hong Kong no longer had the top position in the league of first asylum countries holding Vietnamese refugees: Malaysia had assumed this position with around 9,000 which could reach 10,000 by the end of 1986 as against Hong Kong's current 8,000 which could be reduced to 6,000 if resettlement offers materialised (but otherwise could increase almost to Malaysia's level as we mentioned in our telegram number 379).

issue

-

I know that you are considering the line which the UK can take at the EXCOM on this

correspondence resting with our telegram number 476 refers- and we feel that you would like to be aware of the present thinking in UNHCR according to Resettlement Section.

CONFIDENTIAL

/The