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NEWS- UN Officials in Bangladesh to
- Subject: NEWS- UN Officials in Bangladesh to
- From: BurmaJapan@xxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 03 Feb 1998 10:48:00
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