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Myanmar interested in taking back nationals, says Foreign Minister Ali
Myanmar has responded positively to Bangladesh’s demand for repatriation of its nationals, says Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali.
Published : 12 Jan 2017, 08:14 AM
Updated : 12 Jan 2017, 03:06 PM
It showed interest in taking back its nationals who fled to Bangladesh in the last two months after ‘proper verification’, he said, while briefing reporters about his meeting with Myanmar’s state minister for foreign affairs.
State minister U Kyaw Tin came to Dhaka on Tuesday as a special envoy of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
Minister Ali said 65,000 Myanmar citizens crossed the border into Bangladesh after an army operation launched over terror attacks on the country’s border police started fresh violence in the Rakhine State.
Around 33,000 Myanmar nationals had crossed the border previous to the start of the violence and are currently living in refugee camps. The foreign minister estimated some 300,000 other Myanmar nationals were currently living outside these camps.
Dhaka proposed a programme to return registered and unregistered Myanmar nationals across the border to the envoy, the foreign minister said.
The minister said he had also impressed upon the envoy the degree to which ongoing crisis in Rakhine had hampered tourism and economic development in the Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar region.
The Myanmar envoy accepted the proposal, but stressed the importance of verifying that those being sent back were in fact Myanmar nationals. U Kyaw Tin also expressed an interest in starting an initial selection process for repatriation within the next two months.
“The Myanmar envoy would not have visited if there was no interest in repatriation,” said Ali. “As Myanmar has expressed its sincerity in the process, we will proceed to the next step.”
Bangladesh also proposed the formation of a border liaison office and a security and cooperation agreement between the two countries at the meeting. The minister said that Myanmar had agreed to the proposals.
“We are on our way to an appropriate and respectable solution,” said Ali.
The minister stated that the discussion was proceeding in line with Bangladesh’s expectations.
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