TNAG-1788-FCO40-2548-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-general-1988 — Page 108

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PR NO. 196

The Near East and South Asia

the

There are more than 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan largest refugee population in the world. Since 1979, the United States has provided over $600 million in refugee assistance, including over $370 million dollars worth of food. The late President Zia Ul-Haq and the people of Pakistan have offered their land and their hospitality to Afghan refugees for nearly a decade. Now, these refugees appear to have the possibility to return to their homes in the near future. There are obstacles to that repatriation including the critical danger of land mines strewn throughout Afghanistan by Soviet military forces

but we hope that a large number of the Afghan refugees will be able to return home in the coming year.

It

The oldest continuing refugee population involves the Palestinian refugees in the Near East. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) continues to provide basic educational, medical and relief services to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza. is vital that UNRWA should continue providing services, especially in the West Bank and Gaza. I salute the dedicated staff of UNRWA and, especially, Robert Dillon, the American Deputy Director-General who is leaving that organization after four years of energetic and compassionate service.

EMERGENCY CONSULTATIONS IN FY 88

Throughout the Reagan Administration, and consistently since World War II, the United States has vigorously championed the cause of freedom of emigration from the Soviet Union. In the past year, after an eight year period of only minimal and unacceptable emigration, the Soviet Union has granted exit permits to tens of thousands of persons -- primarily Jews, Armenians, ethnic Germans, and some Pentecostalists. All other Soviet citizens, however, have virtually no opportunity to emigrate.

We applaud the emigration policy reforms in the Soviet Union, but we urge the Soviet government to comply fully with the emigration provisions of the Helsinki Final Act. International human rights standards recognize the right to emigrate and to return to one's country, but not to immigrate into any country of one's choosing. Standards and limits to immigration are determined by national decision and legislation. The United States has responded generously, but we too, have limits set by the immigration and refugee laws relating both to eligibility criteria and to the numbers we can absorb.