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draft revised along those lines. The question of an increased contribution for UNHCR activities in Hong Kong will need to be pursued in slower time. It will be the subject of a separate submission, which we shall need to agree between Diplomatic Wing and ODA officials and put forward through Mr Patten to the Secretary of State.
Cortan
CO Hum
I agree that the questions of reintegration assistance in Vietnam and an additional contribution to UNHCR towards the cost of their (increased) activities in Hong Kong are best treated separately and that only the former needs to be put to the Prime Minister at this stage.
2. The department have done their best to produce the kind of figures for which the Secretary of State has asked but they inevitably lack precision. The cost of assistance in kind to those returning to rural areas would presumably be less than the US$ 500-800 which the UNHCR envisage for an urban family (the equivalent of two years income for an average wager earner at a realistit rate of exchange). But if US$ 500 per family is taken as a bench mark total resettlement assistance for 10,000 boat people (a figure which will be reached shortly) would be only around $1 million assuming five people per family. Hum's suggestion of US$ 500 per head (paragraph 7) is a worse case guestimate which assumes that air travel and a number of other costs in addition to reintegration assistance would have to be paid. The UNHCR figure of US$ 5 million for an initial programme is also very much a guess (the UNHCR do not say how many people it would cover, or where the returnees would come from though it is pretty clear that they do not envisage a programme confined to Hong Kong).
Mr
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3.
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