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He
resettlement countries would be prepared to do more within those finite limits. He said it would be difficult to screen out refugees
unless there were satisfactory arrangements for resettling them.
said he had recently spoken with Ian Simington, an Immigration
Official from Australia who attended the Geneva ICG meeting, who had
no problem with the concept of "warehousing", even without
screening.
5.
French asked what the constitutional position was if Hong Kong
wished to go ahead with a particular course of action which was
unacceptable to the UK. I said that was a hypothetical question: we
had always in the past managed to identify a mutually agreeable
course of action, because when it came down to it it was in
Hong Kong's interest to act in a manner that was internationally
acceptable.
6.
He
French said that in his view Hong Kong should not continue to
accept the full financial burden of running the closed centres.
said that this had been accepted previously because of UNHCR doubts
about conditions in the centres. Such doubts were unreasonable when
one looked at conditions in other camps in the region which were
funded by UNHCR. Pressure was mounting in Hong Kong to pass more of
the costs to UNHCR. What was my view. I said that it was for Hong
Kong to develop its own proposals. I was not surprised that Hong
Kong should wish to pass the costs on to UNHCR. But Hong Kong was
not in a strong position to persuade UNHCR to assist. It would be
helpful if Hong Kong could formally forewarn us of any developments
in this area, as clearly it would help their case if the UK, who
contributed considerable amounts of money to UNHCR, were to back up Hong Kong in any attempts to pass costs to UNHCR. We could only do that credibly if we could ourselves identify funds within our
contributions to UNHCR which could be allocated to this purpose.
But that would be very difficult, and would take some time to think
through.
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