Plan to Spur ‘Boat People’ Return Falters : Vietnam: Most of those who had agreed not to oppose repatriation from Hong Kong back out at the last minute.

An American-backed plan to speed up the return of Vietnamese “boat people” to their homeland headed for a disastrous debut Tuesday, when the vast majority of participants backed out at the last minute.

Officials said a propaganda barrage from California-based exile groups was partly to blame for the turnabout.

Refugee officials said that only 25 Vietnamese were transferred from detention camps to a holding center at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport for a flight to Hanoi, now scheduled for Thursday. Originally, the names of 128 Vietnamese had been submitted to the Vietnamese government, meaning that more than 80% have decided to stay behind.

“Of course, we are disappointed that so many people have chosen to change their minds,” said Robert van Leeuwen, the Hong Kong representative of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “But we are not discouraged.”

But Van Leeuwen said he will have to re-evaluate today whether it is worth sending back just the 25 people since the United Nations has to charter a Boeing 737 from DragonAir, a Hong Kong-based airline. As recently as Sunday, officials had expected 110 people to make the trip.

Thursday’s flight was intended to establish a new category of Vietnamese detainee in Hong Kong: a boat person who did not volunteer to return to his homeland but also does not object to being sent back. They have been dubbed “non-objectors” by refugee officials.

The new program was established after talks in September between the U.N. agency, Vietnam and Britain, which is Hong Kong’s colonial ruler. The careful definition of non-objector was designed to meet the Bush Administration’s objection to the forced repatriation of boat people to Vietnam, while answering Hong Kong pleas to be unburdened of thousands of boat people who have been rejected as refugees.

The non-objector idea was a compromise worked out with the Administration after an international refugee conference in May ended in disarray because the United States refuses to accept the idea of sending back boat people against their will. As a result of the impasse, countries of “first asylum” such as Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore have refused to accept any new boat people this year, and the international refugee agreement that has been in place since 1979 has been brought to the brink of collapse.

According to the latest Hong Kong statistics, there are more than 52,000 Vietnamese in detention camps in the colony. About 6,000 arrived before a June 16, 1988, deadline and were automatically considered refugees. Of the remainder, 13,726 have been screened out, meaning they were rejected as refugees, and 2,529 were screened in. Another 30,738 are still awaiting determination.

Clinton Leeks, Hong Kong’s refugee coordinator, told reporters that it is not possible to abandon the non-objector plan just because there were few participants on the first flight. “We must persevere with this program,” he said.

Refugee officials said there were a number of reasons to explain the change of heart by the returning boat people, headed by a recent leaflet campaign in the camps that warned the boat people that they faced torture or death if they agreed to go back home.

Hong Kong’s British governor, David Wilson, denounced the “rumormongering” in the camps and said the leaflet campaign was “completely callous” because the allegations were unfounded.

Many of the Vietnamese-language leaflets were signed “Refugee Task Force USA” and were believed to have emanated from emigre organizations in Orange County.