WORLD : Filipinos Admit ‘Boat People’

MANILA — The government allowed more than 250 Vietnamese “boat people” stranded on U.S. Navy ships to come ashore today after U.S. officials promised to help resettle the refugees elsewhere.

“We are not going to push back asylum seekers out to sea,” Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus told reporters. “It is not our policy.”

Senior Chief Petty Officer James Jones, a spokesman for the U.S.-run Subic Bay Naval Base, said the refugees left the ships at noon and were on their way to a processing center in the central island of Palawan.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Victoria Middleton said Washington was happy with the development, which ended a 2-week-old dispute between the Philippines and the United States regarding the plight of the refugees.