U.S. Eases Stance on Repatriating Indochinese ‘Boat People’ : Diplomacy: Those who don’t object can be sent home, Baker says. But Washington will strongly oppose return of people against their will.

The Bush Administration served notice Friday that it is willing to go along with a proposal to make it easier for Asian governments to return Indochinese “boat people” to their former homes in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III announced that the United States, for the first time, will accept a plan under which Vietnamese or Cambodians who have fled from Indochina will be sent home whenever they “do not object” to repatriation.

Appearing at a meeting of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Baker emphasized, however, that the United States continues to oppose strongly any effort to return any of the boat people to Vietnam or Cambodia against their will.

The easing of the U.S. position on Indochinese refugees came in response to intense pressure by Southeast Asian governments and by British officials responsible for Hong Kong.

Over the last three years, tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians have fled by boat to Hong Kong and to neighboring countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. More than 110,000 Indochinese boat people are now being detained in refugee camps in these countries.

These Asian governments and Britain have grown increasingly irritated with the refusal of American officials to accept the principle that the boat people should be sent back to Vietnam and Cambodia, even against their will.

The Bush Administration argues that no one should be forced to return to Vietnam until there are changes in Hanoi’s hard-line Communist regime. Yet, other Asian governments charge that the United States is being hypocritical because American officials routinely ship home refugees who come to the United States from places such as Haiti, Mexico and El Salvador.

Last Tuesday, two days before Baker arrived here, the six members of ASEAN (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei) adopted a resolution condemning the United States by name for its refusal to accept “involuntary repatriation” of those boat people who have fled Vietnam or Cambodia strictly for economic reasons.

It was not clear whether Friday’s easing of the U.S. position will satisfy the Asian governments. But one senior Malaysian official said bluntly he did not believe Baker’s concession went far enough.

“What about those people (in refugee camps) who don’t want to go anywhere?” the Malaysian official told reporters outside the ASEAN meeting. “It’s got to be, ‘Everyone must go.’ ”

Last year, Malaysia effectively abandoned the commitment made by it and other Asian governments to let Indochinese boat people land on their shores and to grant them the so-called right of first asylum. Since March, 1989, Malaysia has turned away more than 8,000 Vietnamese boat people and sent them back to sea.

” . . . Perhaps some boats (from Vietnam) are redirected, after they have been replenished,” Albert S. Talala, Malaysia’s ambassador to the United States, said recently.

In their joint statement this week, the ASEAN countries suggested that unless they get new help from the United States, they may all begin to follow Malaysia’s example and start turning away the Indochinese boat people. Without some new solution, the ASEAN foreign ministers said, they would “take such actions as they deem necessary . . . to safeguard their national interests, including the abandonment of temporary refuge.”

Japan supported the Asian countries in their dispute with the United States over the Indochina refugees. Makoto Yamanaka, a spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry, said Japan believes “that some form of involuntary repatriation should be worked out.”

Until now, the Indochinese boat people being held in detention camps in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Southeast Asia have been divided into two categories: those who are willing to volunteer to return home and those who refuse to volunteer.

Only a small percentage--slightly more than 3,000 of the more than 110,000 being detained in the camps--have volunteered to go home.

The compromise proposal embraced by Baker on Friday first was suggested by British officials in Hong Kong and later was supported by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Thorvald Stoltenberg. Under it, a new, third category would be set up for boat people who, while not actually volunteering to go home, do not object to being repatriated.

One senior Bush Administration said Friday that an important factor in deciding which refugees fall into this category would be whether some of the boat people can be persuaded, without the use of force or coercion, to return to Vietnam. Those boat people who physically resist a return to Vietnam still would not be required to go home, he indicated.

Another senior U.S. official said there might be some form of “counseling” for Indochina refugees in the camps to induce them to overcome their objections to going home.

“If you add financial support to resettle them (back in Vietnam or Cambodia), there is a process that would encourage people who might not otherwise raise their hands to say, ‘I want to go back,’ ” this Bush Administration official said.

Baker also proposed to the Asian governments Friday that the United States and other countries make a new commitment to clear away all the boat people from the Southeast Asian refugee camps by the end of 1992, either by returning them to Vietnam or by resettling them in third countries.

The secretary pointedly reminded the ASEAN foreign ministers that the United States has already resettled 900,000 Southeast Asian refugees inside its borders since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Baker said the United States has met its financial commitments by pledging $21 million to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees this year and has pledged to accept 18,500 more Indochinese refugees in the United States within three years.

U.S. officials acknowledged that during Baker’s private meetings Friday, his efforts to alleviate the Southeast Asian officials’ anger over the Indochinese refugees met with quite a bit of skepticism.

“Frankly, some of them (Southeast Asian officials) said, ‘We’ll have to go back and think about it,’ ” an Administration official said.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who represents northwestern Orange County, said he is “apprehensive” about the shift in policy, however slight. Rohrabacher strongly opposes forced repatriation of boat people and is a co-sponsor of legislation that would cut off U.S. aid to Malaysia until the country ends its policy of turning away refugee boats.

“It seems to me that people would not be fleeing a communist dictatorship (in Vietnam) and then voluntarily want to return,” Rohrabacher said. “If they risked their lives to get out, what makes anybody think they may want to go back.” Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who is working to establish a regional holding center for boat people to take pressure off the Southeast Asian host nations, said he also has reservations.

“It’s tilting toward forced repatriation,” Dornan said of the Baker announcement. “I’m not supportive yet for this reason: Is there going to be a team there reading (the boat people) their Miranda rights, saying, ‘All you have to do is speak up to object?’ . . .

However, Dornan said, he believes the Baker statement is a move by the Bush Administration to buy time with the first-asylum nations so that they “don’t come back and say, ‘You’ve come up with no solutions’ . . . and then start to push everybody away.”