U.S. May Urge Repatriation of Refugees

Secretary of State George P. Shultz suggested Saturday that the United States may begin to encourage many of the refugees now fleeing Vietnam and Cambodia to go back to their homelands.

After a series of meetings with Southeast Asian officials, the secretary of state told reporters that the United States is considering a number of new ideas concerning Indochina refugees, “including the possibilities of voluntary repatriation.”

Under a voluntary repatriation program, refugees would not be forced to return to the land from which they fled. But they could be confronted with the choice of either going home or remaining indefinitely in refugee camps under austere conditions where their freedom is severely restricted.

Shultz’s remarks were the clearest indication yet of a recent major shift in U.S. policy toward Indochina refugees.

821,000 Settled in U.S.

Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the United States has granted a home to 821,000 Indochinese refugees. However, U.S. officials now appear to have concluded that a policy allowing this continuing tide of refugees to settle in the West merely encourages others inside Vietnam and Cambodia to try to flee.

“People are getting uneasy about this (resettling Indochina refugees) in the United States, in Southeast Asian countries, Australia and elsewhere,” Shultz said Saturday. “Why? Because it is feared that the policies themselves are creating a potential problem.”

With a new surge of “boat people” leaving Vietnam and Cambodia this year, Shultz continued, “People have said, ‘What’s going to happen here? How can we cope with all these additional people? Will there be resettlement of them or not, and if not, what are we going to do?’ ”

Thailand, which has 480,000 Indochina refugees within its borders, and Malaysia, which has 13,000 refugees, have been urging Western countries to help them cope with the new influx from Indochina.

U.S. Cool to Idea

Last week, the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations called for a new international conference to address the problem of the Indochinese refugees. The Reagan Administration reacted coolly to the proposal, saying officials should hold smaller, less dramatic meetings first.

Shultz said Saturday that the United States might go along with an international conference “sometime next spring”--a timetable that would postpone the final policy decisions on the refugees until a new Administration takes office in Washington.

Officials from Vietnam have recently told the United States that they might be willing to discuss a program to take back some of the refugees, Shultz told reporters, but he said Vietnam added a suggestion that he termed “ridiculous.”

“They said, ‘Well, we’ll talk about it, but maybe you ought to pay us something for being willing to consider voluntary repatriation,’ ” Shultz said. “ . . . Only Vietnam would be presumptuous enough to raise a question like that.”

Rights in Malaysia

The secretary spoke with reporters aboard his plane shortly after a brief visit to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

For the second time in two days, Shultz expressed U.S. concern about human rights violations by the Malaysian regime of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed. The Malaysian government last year detained opposition party officials and leaders of the ethnic Chinese community.

U.S. officials said Shultz raised human rights issues Friday with Malaysian Foreign Ministry officials in Bangkok, Thailand, and again Saturday in a meeting here with Mahathir. “The subject was discussed in a full and satisfactory way,” Shultz said after the meeting with Mahathir.