THE arguments for and against Britain taking responsibility for the 21,000 Vietnamese boat people left in Hong Kong have overlooked the men and women in the middle, the living, breathing human beings.
In a bid to solve the Vietnamese problem, legislators this week attempted to grill an apparently poorly briefed Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind on Britain's plans for dealing with the controversial issue. Mr Rifkind's comment that this was a 'Hong Kong problem' coming within the concept of autonomy was one he no doubt regrets.
The next day he was forced to acknowledge (without managing to admit the previous day's mistake) that Britain indeed acted on behalf of the territory in any representations pertaining to Vietnam. What he should then have said was that even if Britain wanted to bear responsibility for the boat people left in Hong Kong after 1997, it couldn't.
To do so would send a clear message to those languishing in the camps that someone would be looking out for them. Until now, Hong Kong has relied on June 30, 1997, to provide the ultimate deadline - fostering a feeling in the camps that a return to Vietnam would be better than detention under Chinese rule.
Britain also has the problem of facing China's demands that all Vietnamese be repatriated before the handover. If Britain were to publicly accept responsibility for the boat people after 1997 it would be a tacit acknowledgement that the problem could not be resolved before then.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Jian says otherwise. 'It [Britain] has the unshirkable responsibility to solve the problem in an appropriate way before 1997,' he said.