Briton Hopes U.S. Stops Opposing Forced Return of ‘Boat People’

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said Tuesday that Britain hopes the Bush Administration will soon drop its opposition to forced repatriation of “boat people” to Vietnam and that he can see no option but to continue with the controversial deportations.

Senior British officials have been dropping hints here since the start of Hurd’s visit that Washington is prepared to reverse its longstanding opposition to sending boat people back to Vietnam after they fail to quality as political refugees. They said the United States seeks a delay in a Geneva meeting of the U.N. standing committee on Vietnamese refugees, originally scheduled for Thursday, to allow time to formulate a new policy on deportations.

The British believe the Administration is now publicly prepared to accept the principle of deportations, provided that the British give a voluntary return program more time to work.

International acceptance of the mandatory repatriation program would allow it to be carried out under the monitoring and payment of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

The mandatory return program began in December, when Hong Kong sent home 51 people who had failed to qualify as political refugees in the three-tier screening used since June, 1988.

“No date has been fixed for future planeloads,” Hurd told a news conference Tuesday at the end of a four-day visit. “But I don’t see anything on the immediate horizon that would enable us to alter that policy . . . because I don’t see at the moment another way of making it clear that moving from Vietnam to Hong Kong is not a road to resettlement in the West.”

Hurd spent the morning touring two centers for boat people. Residents of one, at Hei Ling Chau, organized a noisy but peaceful demonstration to show their opposition to forced repatriation.