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Bhutanese Refugee Issue: Bhutan proposes int’l coordination
KATHMANDU, APR 01 -
Bhutan has said that the long standoff over Bhutanese refugees will be solved among Nepal and Bhutan along with international coordination.
This is the first time that Bhutan has included the possibility of international coordination to solve the decade-long problem with Nepal.
Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley, who was in the Capital to attend the 13th day of late Girija Prasad Koirala’s passing, on Thursday met Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and stressed that more is needed to be done to resolve the issue.
“We are hopeful that Nepal and Bhutan in coordination with the international community can take the issue further. We are very serious about the problem,” Thinley said after the meeting.
He also expressed satisfaction over the third country resettlement programme for the refugees and said that his country respected the “right to return” of the Bhutanese refugees.
Nepal has repeatedly asked Bhutan to respect the rights of the refugees to return to their homeland although some have been repatriated and settled in a third country. More than 20,000 Bhutanese refugees have settled in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
During the meeting with his Bhutanese counterpart, Prime Minister Nepal said that Bhutan should respect the “rights to return” of the repatriated as basic human rights of the refugees.
“Third country resettlement was not a solution to the problem. We have to make an environment to settle them inside Bhutan,” said Rajan Bhattrai, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister, quoting Prime Minister Nepal.
The Bhutanese Prime Minister also called on Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Sujata Koirala at her residence to express condolences on Koirala’s demise. Paying tribute to the late Koirala, Thinley said that he was not only a great leader of Nepal but of South Asia, and that he was a beacon of hope for democracy in Nepal, according to a Foreign Ministry press release. Thinley also extended an invitation to Nepal to attend the 16th SAARC summit to be held in Bhutan.
“Both Prime Ministers shared their views on the issues of climate change and environmental degradation, which is the main theme of the Thimpu SAARC Summit,” the release said.
Posted on: 2010-04-02 07:29
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