TNAG-2066-FCO40-2944-Vietnamese-boat-people-and-China-1990 — Page 150

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C C D Haswell

Hong Kong Department

4 May 1990

Mr Gillmore

Mr Davies, FED

Mr Brenton, UND

Mr Stone, HKD

Mr Bruce, SEAD

Mr Whitehead, News Dept

F

HKB 243 113

VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE: MANDATORY REPATRIATION

REGIS : Action

1. The programme of voluntary repatriation from Hong Kong is going well, and there is a slim possibility that the rate of volunteering might pick up sufficiently to keep the programme running for some months, thereby enabling us to put the issue of mandatory, or 'alternative', returns on the back burner, as Stoltenberg would wish. But if the programme dries up, we are going to face some major practical and political problems if we have not prepared an alternative strategy.

This alternative must be one which we are

able to put into practice immediately the need arises.

2. The principle obstacle at the moment is not so much the US attitude but Vietnamese stonewalling on the use of force (though the two are of course linked). This issue appears not to have arisen between the Vietnamese and the Chinese when people have been repatriated across their land border. If our problem is the physical process of getting people onto Vietnamese soil, there might be a solution here.

3. My suggestion is that we should work towards an arrangement whereby we return screened out Vietnamese to the Chinese across the border at Man Kam To at the same time as the daily return of Chinese illegal immigrants. The Chinese would then truck them across South

LEGADM

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