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NEWS- UN Officials in Bangladesh to



UN Officials in Bangladesh to Discuss Refugees

               Reuters
               02-FEB-98
               By Shehab Ahmed Nafa 

               DHAKA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - A team of
               officials from the United Nations High
               Commissioner for Refugees
               (UNHCR) held talks on Monday with
               Bangladeshi officials on resuming the
               repatriation of thousands of Myanmar
               (Burma) refugees. 

               Government officials said the team
               arrived in Dhaka on Sunday from
               Myanmar and held talks with officials
               in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar border
               district, temporary home to some
               21,000 Moslem refugees called
               Rohingyas, on the same day. 

               The team, headed by the UNHCR's
               Asia and Pacific director F. Fouinat,
               had further talks with Home (Interior)
               Minister Rafiqul Islam on Monday. 

               ``They will have another meeting with
               foreign and relief ministry officials on
               Tuesday,'' one official said but
               declined to give details. 

               Government sources earlier said the
               UNHCR was sending its
               representatives to Bangladesh after
               reports that refugees in two camps
               had revolted and refused to allow
               security forces to enter the camps. 

               Police, while terming the reports as
               exaggerated, admitted that the
               situation in Nayapara camp, which
               houses about 12,000 Rohingyas, was
               tense. 

               They also suspected the camp
               inmates might have included some
               members of the Rohingya Solidarity
               Organisation, a Moslem rebel group
               fighting for independence for western
               Myanmar's Arakan province, which
               borders Cox's Bazar. 

               The 21,000 refugees are the
               remnants of some 250,000
               Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh in
               early 1992 to escape alleged
               persecution by Myanmar's military
               junta. 

               Repatriation of the Rohingyas,
               started in September 1992 following
               an agreement between Dhaka and
               Yangon, stopped last April.
               Bangladeshi officials blamed the
               delay on foot-dragging by Myanmar
               authorities in granting clearance for
               the last Rohingyas to be repatriated. 

               The Bangladesh government then
               turned down a subsequent UNHCR
               plea to allowing the 21,000 refugees,
               some 9,000 of which live in the
               second camp at Kutupalong, to stay
               permanently in Bangladesh. 

               ``Now it's a total deadlock,'' one
               official in Cox's Bazar said on
               Monday. ``We have asked the
               UNHCR, which had been supervising
               the repatriation, to convince Myanmar
               to take back all the refugees.''
               ^REUTERS@ Reut10:49 02-02-98
               SLUG: BC-BANGLADESH-UNHCR