Shultz Cool to New Indochina Refugee Effort

Acknowledging that the U.S. attitude toward Indochinese refugees has changed in the past decade, the Reagan Administration sought Thursday to dampen Asian hopes for a major new international effort to deal with the increased flow of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other U.S. officials reacted coolly to a recent proposal by the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for a new, U.N.-sponsored conference on the flood of “boat people” and other refugees streaming out of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Shultz said he felt that such a conference should be held only if it would prove constructive. The United States, he said, favors holding other, smaller meetings to discuss refugee problems first.

At a meeting with Asian leaders here, Shultz promised that the United States, which has provided a home for 821,000 Indochinese refugees since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, will continue its resettlement program at “high levels.” The United States currently admits about 30,000 Indochinese refugees a year.

U.S. officials attending the ASEAN meeting in Bangkok freely admitted that the American policy has shifted since the late 1970s, when the United States sought to accept as many Indochinese refugees as possible and encouraged other countries, such as Canada, Australia and France, to do likewise.

“Circumstances have changed,” one State Department official said. “It’s been 13 years since the end of the war.”

He said the United States believes that an international conference might fail because many countries that were willing to give a home to Indochinese refugees a few years ago might be less willing to do so today.

A Reagan Administration official who briefed reporters here on condition that he not be identified said the problem of refugees from Indochina must also compete for attention with similar problems elsewhere in the world.

“Africa has the most dire refugee needs in the world right now,” he said, adding that refugees from Afghanistan also are becoming a high priority.

The ‘Magnet Problem’

This official also made it plain that the United States and other countries that have given homes to Indochinese refugees are worried about what they call the “magnet” problem: If these countries continue to accept large numbers of refugees, it may serve to encourage others still living in Vietnam and Cambodia to join in the exodus.

“The danger of magnets, of the pull factor, is clearer today than it was seven years ago,” he said.

Over the last 13 years, 1.5 million refugees from Indochina have been resettled in other countries, more than half of them in the United States. Canada has taken 116,000 refugees, Australia 114,000 and France 103,000. No other nation has accepted more than 25,000. Japan, which contributes heavily to the cost of resettling Indochinese refugees in other countries, has admitted only 2,714.

The recent calls for a new international conference on refugees have been pushed especially hard by Thailand and Malaysia, which have complained that they are beset by a continuing influx of Indochinese boat people and are finding it increasingly difficult to find countries that will grant homes for them.

‘Compassion Fatigue’

“Nearly 10 years have gone by, and the number of refugees in our camps who have not been resettled increases rather than decreases,” a Malaysian official said recently. “Some people have been in the camps for more than five years.” He said that “compassion fatigue is setting in” among nations that were once willing to accept the Indochinese.

Over the past year, the number of people fleeing Indochina has increased, apparently because of serious economic troubles in Vietnam and because of the development of a new, shorter sea route for refugees fleeing Cambodia for Thailand.

The new outflow has led to instances of violence against the boat people. Last February, the U.S. ambassador to Thailand, William E. Brown, told Congress: “Based on first- and second-hand reports, we estimate that more than 100 people have died, primarily from drowning after boats have been pushed off (from shore), but in one case by a reported ramming by a Thai fishing boat of a craft carrying Vietnamese refugees.”

Hong Kong has responded to the new influx of boat people by seeking to draw a distinction between political refugees, who leave out of fear of political persecution, and economic refugees, who are fleeing conditions of poverty inside Vietnam and Cambodia. The economic refugees are being required to stay in camps permanently or to return to Indochina.

More Economic Refugees

At the media briefing Thursday, the Reagan Administration official expressed sympathy with this approach. He said the characteristics of the refugees coming out of Indochina have changed and that there are more “economic refugees” now than there were a few years ago.

Earlier this week, the ASEAN countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei) approved a statement calling for an international conference on Indochinese refugees and expressing concern “over new restrictive resettlement criteria which have resulted in the buildup of long-staying refugee populations in the region.”

Shultz told the ASEAN officials the United States favors a series of measures that would discourage people from leaving Vietnam illegally, would help resettle some Indochina refugees now living in countries such as Thailand and would press Vietnam to improve programs that permit people to leave in a legal and orderly way.

The United States admitted 36,000 Indochinese refugees in 1986 and 32,000 last year. U.S. officials said they expect to admit a slightly smaller number this year, about 29,500.

Opposes Pol Pot Return

Meanwhile, Shultz reaffirmed Thursday that the United States remains “unalterably opposed” to any agreement that would allow the Khmer Rouge to return to power in Cambodia when Vietnamese troops leave.

He did not say whether the United States might accept some form of coalition Cambodian government that would include representatives of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge regime, headed by Pol Pot, was responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million people when it ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1978.

Japan said Thursday that it might be willing to pay for an international peacekeeping force to ensure a cease-fire in Cambodia after the Vietnamese leave. Japanese Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno also suggested that Japanese officials might serve as supervisors for any elections that might be held in Cambodia.