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Press, 20 December 1988, Page 8

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Repatriation pact

Vietnam and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, JeanPierre Hocke, have signed a protocol agreement on voluntary repatriation to Vietnam, the United Nations announced. Mr Hocke and Vietnam’s deputy Foreign Minister, Vu Khoan, signed the agreement pledging to “continue to work together with a view to resolving the humanitarian problems of SouthEast Asia by broadening the programme of legal departures and speeding up its operation.” According to the United Nations, as of December 1, some 154,500 people, 60,000 of them Vietnamese, were in camps run by the U.N.H.C.R. in South-East Asia. —Geneva.

Peace talks Three rebel leaders began peace talks with military commanders to end a 15-year guerrilla war which has killed more than 1500 people in southern Bangladesh. Officials said Rupayan Dewan, Nitish Dewan and Sudaysindhu Krisha, three leaders of the Shanti Bahini (Peace Force) guerrillas, met area commander Major-General Abdus Salam at Khagrachhari, a Chittagong Hill Tracts district headquarters town 48km from the Indian border. —Dhaka. $12,900 for ms The manuscript of a play written by George Orwell when he was a schoolteacher sold for £4400 ($NZ12,900), a spokesman for Sotheby’s

auction house said. The play, “King Charles II,” was written in 1932 when Orwell was 29 and teaching at a school west of London, just after he wrote "Down and Out in Paris and London.” His pupils performed the piece as their Christmas play in cardboard armour costumes made by Orwell himself. —London. Hostage freed

A freed Swiss hostage, Peter Winkler, arrived home after a month’s captivity in Lebanon and said he was ready to return to work as a Red Cross official. Mr Winkler, aged 32, was released on Friday night after being seized on November 17 near the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain alHilweh. —Zurich.