Hanoi agrees to assist in boatpeople repatriation

JAKARTA (JP): A special team from Vietnam is scheduled to arrive on Galang Island, Riau, to help accelerate the repatriation of Vietnamese boat people living there.

An Indonesian Foreign Ministry official said yesterday that the team's task will be to screen as many boat people as possible and determine whether they are ready for immediate repatriation back to Vietnam.

"Hopefully this will help expedite departures, as you know the program has been put back long enough," said the official who asked not to named.

The official said that how soon the team would be arriving would depend on the readiness of Hanoi. "However, we hope they will arrive as soon as possible, preferably within the next two weeks."

Galang still hosts more than 3,000 boat people, the majority of whom are Vietnamese. The deadline to clear the island of the refugees, which extend as far back as 1994, have been continuously put back.

In the last 15 years, Galang has been home to nearly 250,000 boat people. At the beginning of the year, there were still more than 4,400 boat people on the island.

Located just south of Singapore, the island has been designated for development as part of the Indonesian government's Barelang (Batam, Rempang and Galang islands) bonded zone area.

The Jakarta representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Robert Cooper, yesterday also confirmed that Hanoi had agreed to send a high level team to Galang.

He was quoted as telling Reuters from Tanjung Pinang yesterday that the agreement was reached on Wednesday.

"This team will be able to make decisions on the spot whether somebody is cleared to go back to Vietnam," Cooper said.

Last month the Indonesian Armed Forces spearheaded a program to repatriate the boat people by using naval transport ships in the hope of emptying the island by the end of this month.

The transport ships would accommodate up to 200 boat people on the four-day journey from Galang to Ho Chi Minh city.

Military officials have pledged to avoid using force in boarding the Vietnamese on to the boats.

"The Indonesians are going for the very quick fix and closure by the end of July, but the Vietnamese are going at a nice slow, regular but routine pace," Cooper said. (mds)