Hanoi Said to OK Refugees’ Forced Return : Vietnam: A U.N. official says the Southeast Asian nation has reversed its policy. More than 50,000 ‘boat people’ are in Hong Kong alone.

Vietnam apparently has reversed a longstanding policy and agreed to take back “boat people” who are forcibly returned home, a U.N. official said Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese have been denied refugee status but refuse to return home from several Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong. More than 50,000 in Hong Kong alone are crowded in squalid, violence-ridden camps.

To qualify for refugee status, the boat people must be found to be fleeing political persecution. Hong Kong has long maintained that most Vietnamese are fleeing from poverty and seeking a better way of life.

Vietnam has opposed the forcible repatriation of these people, who are called “economic migrants.” But Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said his agency has learned that Hanoi now has “expressed its willingness” to take back these Vietnamese.

Redmond said it appears that the policy change was a result of contacts with Hong Kong and British officials, who have been seeking mandatory repatriation. He gave no further details.

The United States long has opposed forced repatriation. Hong Kong tried to forcibly return 51 boat people in December, 1989, but international condemnation forced the British colony to abandon the effort.

Redmond said that under international law, countries are entitled to deport people who cannot claim refugee status. He said the United Nations will “not be associated with any use of force” in such repatriations but will continue to provide assistance to those who return.

Vietnamese have fled their Communist homeland aboard rickety boats since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

There was no immediate word on how the other countries sheltering boat people in Southeast Asia would react to Hanoi’s new policy. They include Thailand and Malaysia, each with more than 16,000 boat people, Indonesia with more than 19,000 and the Philippines with more than 8,000.

By Aug. 1, 18,100 boat people in Hong Kong had been found ineligible for political asylum. About 37,700 others were still waiting to be screened, and 5,700 were granted formal refugee status.