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U.S. WANTS CAMBODIAN BOAT PEOPLE SCREENED, MAKES NO COMMITMENTS
Home > Journalism >Politics

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By Elizabeth Pisani
382 words
18 May 1990
Reuters News
(c) 1990 Reuters Limited

JAKARTA, May 18, Reuter - The United States on Friday said Cambodian boat people should be screened like the Vietnamese but did not promise to take in those who qualified as refugees.

"We believe Cambodians should be subjected to the same procedures as the Vietnamese," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Richard Solomon told reporters during a visit to Indonesia.

The United Nations has agreed on a comprehensive plan for screening out those Vietnamese who fled political persecution from those simply driven by poverty to search for a better life overseas. Economic migrants will be sent back to Vietnam.

But Cambodians boat people are not covered under the plan.

"Our general commitment is to take in 50 per cent of those determined by screening to be genuine refugees," Solomon said.

While Washington would like to see screening for Cambodians, Solomon said the United States had not yet committed to take half of the Cambodians determined to be genuine refugees.

Indonesian authorities took three of the six newly arrived boatloads of Cambodians to an overcrowded refugee camp at Galang. The Cambodians have said they wanted to go on to Australia.

Jakarta has not ruled out allowing other boats to continue on. Political analysts said that might damage fragile relations with Australia, traditionally a country that chooses Vietnamese from Southeast Asian camps for resettlement rather than offering first asylum.

Both Australia and the United States have urged Southeast Asian nations to continue to house and feed boat people until they could be resettled elsewhere or sent back home.

Canberra has promised 1.1 million U.S. dollars to upgrade the Galang camp. Solomon said the United States would contribute one million dollars.

The camp, designed for 5,000 Vietnamese boat people, now holds 12,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians.

Jakarta has appealed to a conference of United Nations officials on Indochinese boat people currently being held in Manila to solve the problem.

At the conference, Southeast Asian nations and Hong Kong said they could no longer foot the bill for boat people and warned that if no solution was found they would begin sending economic migrants back against their will on July 1, despite U.S. and Vietnamese opposition.

 

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