The World - News from July 5, 1988

Foreign ministers from Southeast Asia’s non-Communist alliance called for a U.N.-sponsored conference in early 1989 to deal with the region’s thousands of refugees. Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, the officials of the six-member Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations said a 1979 Geneva agreement needs to be overhauled because “the structures, premises and assumptions of the past are no longer capable of dealing with the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ problem.” They called on Vietnam to “discourage the illegal outflow of people.” The Asian alliance includes Thailand, where more than 40,000 Vietnamese refugees reside, and Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei.