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The first two Norwegian workers devoted to this particular programme arrived in Vietnam on 18 May and Nesse himself will be going out on 25 May to oversee the preparations. The director for the scheme, an official from the Local Administration Ministry who happens to have experience in refugee affairs, will follow shortly and begin full operation from June. In August NARV will also be acquiring a full-time Information Officer in Hanoi, who will publish a regular newsletter publicising progress on the minors scheme and will also act as a data bank of the progress of individual cases.
5.
The NARV scheme has received some support from the Norwegian MFA's humanitarian aid fund. Development aid money has not hitherto been available because of the general policy on an aid boycott of Vietnam. The Refugee Council have, however, been lobbying the Government for some time to re-start aid since the improvement of economic conditions in Vietnam is the only long-term solution for the refugee problem. Nesse believed there could be a breakthrough fairly soon and that the Norwegian aid agency NORAD could then be authorised to sponsor the NARV scheme. He also foresaw a possible increase in finance from EC sources: the EC office in Vietnam were taking a keen interest in NARV and related programmes, and indeed the Nordics' main concern was to fight off the risk that the EC would simply take them over.
6. I found Nesse's comments on the US angle particularly interesting. He said NARV was already receiving up to $500,000 of US Government money which was being forwarded (without publicity) by UNHCR. He revealed that the first impetus for the unaccompanied minors programme had come from a remark by a US official. He believed there were signs of evolution in the US attitude both to migrant repatriation and to Vietnam as a whole. Despite major blips like Quayle's unfortunate remark in Geneva, the US nowadays seemed very low-key in their criticism of actual developments in repatriation. At an information meeting held in Washington on 25 April under the auspices of the Indo-Chinese Resource Centre, where State Department and UNHCR officials had attended together with the Norwegian Refugee Council Director Trygve Nordby, the Norwegians had the impression that the Vietnamese expatriate community in America was no longer fundamentally opposed to mandatory repatriation. Their queries had mostly been detailed ones about the fairness of screening procedures. It had emerged that up to 80,000 Vietnamese expatriates had re-visited Vietnam last year, and there was a general recognition that things there were changing. Nordby had lobbied the US officials to reconsider a resumption of aid, particularly to balance Chinese influence and to allow active
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