Threat to Thailand worries Washington

Press, 15 June 1979, Page 5

Threat to Thailand worries Washington

NZPA-Reuter Washington A United States State Department official said yesterday that the fighting in Indo-China threatened to spill into Thailand, where United States support was pledged, but he said there should be no “excessive concern” about American involvement in another war. The Assistant Secretary’ of State (Mr Richard Holbrooke) told a House of Representatives sub-committee that the Vietnam-Cambodia war constantly threatened to move across the border into Thailand. “If that war moves across the border into Thailand, the situation in South-East Asia will be very difficult,” Mr Holbrooke said. He said United States military aid was already being increased to Thailand, and: “We must make clear to Vietnam the high importance we attach to supporting Thailand,” Asked if that meant direct United States military involvement, Mr Holbrooke replied: “At this point I do not wish to raise the spectre of United States involvement in a new Indo-China war. I do not think that is something for excessive concern.”

Representative Lester L. Wolff (Democrat, New York), chairman of the subcommittee, said 1.2 M ethnic Chinese faced expulsion from Vietnam and this threatens to explode in death for perhaps 500,000 men, women, and children. “We face the need for immediate and massive international humanitarian action,” Mr Wolff said. Mr Wolff and Representative Stephen J. Solarz (Democrat, New York) suggested that the United States help by doubling the 7000 Indo-China refugees it now takes in every month. President Carter on Wednesday accused Vietnam of the systematic expulsion of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam.

“We strongly condemn these callous actions on the part of the Vietnamese Government. We call on Vietnam ... to treat its own people humanely so they do not feel compelled to flee,” he said.

Washington’s accusation coincided with announcements in Malaysia and Indonesia that the two countries would accept no more Vietnamese “boat people”

even for temporary asylum. In Hong Kong, a group of Vietnamese aboard the freighter Skyluck have staged a hunger strike in protest against being cooped up on board the ship for more than four months. Some of the 2600 refugees, brought in under cover of darkness last February, refused their rations in a bid to dramatise their plight. A Hong Kong merchant told a court yesterday of a meeting with a business friend from Vietnam who had told him about making money out of refugees. Kwok Wah-leung is the principal Crown witness in the trial of three members of the crew of the freighter Huey Fong and four Vietnamese residents of Hong Kong for conspiracy to defraud the Hong Kong Government by bringing in illegal refugees. The ship arrived in Hong Kong in December carrying 3318 refugees. The master and three of the officers have pleaded guilty. Kwok has admitted he took part in a plot to bring the refugees from Vietnam and that he was given $23,500 to arrange the voyage.