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Kathmandu Saturday December 02, 2000 Mangshir 17, 2057.
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US proposes way out of
refugee imbroglio Nepal accepts, Bhutan...
By Suman Pradhan
KATHMANDU, Dec 1 - The US government has come
up with a fresh proposal in an attempt to jump-start the long stalled repatriation of
nearly 100,000 Bhutanese refugees who have been languishing in Nepal for a decade.
Visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for
South Asia Karl Inderfurth and Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees
and Migration of the US State Department Ms Julia V. Taft disclosed the new US proposal to
journalists here at a news conference Friday.
Ms Taft said that Nepali authorities had
endorsed the proposal. "Our challenge now is to make the proposal attractive to the
Bhutanese authorities," she said.
Both the senior US officials, who are being
accompanied by other officials from the US National Security Council and State Department,
unveiled the new proposal during a meeting with Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala
shortly after arriving in Kathmandu today.
Though primarily a farewell call before the
change of administration in Washington, the out-going Clinton administration is making one
last bid to get the refugee verification process moving with the Inderfurth-Taft visit,
and their new proposal.
"Before verification teams decide the
eligibility of refugees according to the four categories agreed by both Nepal and Bhutan,
there needs to be (some) initial steps," Ms Taft said.
She explained that those steps involved the
need to first identify the refugees, like determining who the head of a nuclear family is.
This head would then identify the members of his/her family. Having agreed upon this, the
two nations then could proceed with the actual verification, the process that determines
which of the four categories the members of the nuclear family so identified by the family
head falls into. For that to occur, Ms Taft said, "we need to get the Bhutanese team
working in Nepal, with Nepali and UNHCR officials."
The US officials hope that Bhutan will accept
its proposal to begin the refugee verification process, an issue which has stymied
Nepal-Bhutan dialogue over refugee repatriation for years. The two sides have already
hammered out four categories to put the refugees into, but the verification of refugees
into those categories await agreement on how to go about it. It is here that the US
proposal comes into play.
On the surface, the new US proposal is not
much different from an earlier proposal floated by the UNHCR which was accepted by Nepal
but rejected by Bhutan a few months ago. The bone of contention then was the definition of
a refugee "family", the unit that would need to be verified.
Government sources said that Nepal at the
time wanted everyone in a family over the age of 18 to be counted in the family unit.
Bhutan wanted a case-by-case identification irrespective of age. The UNHCR convinced Nepal
to raise the age to 25 years to make the proposal palatable to the Bhutanese. Nepal
agreed, but Bhutan rejected even that.
Now the US proposal tries to combine both the
Nepal and Bhutan positions. According to a senior government official familiar with the
proposal, Nepal has always stood for the verification to revolve around a family unit.
Bhutan on the other hand wants individual verification. The new US proposal does both - it
identifies both the individual and family unit. In essence, a refugee who is 25 years old
or above will be interviewed for categorization. Such a refugee will be identified by the
family head.
The Foreign Ministry has calculated that,
even by such standards, at least 60,000 of the nearly 100,000 refugees languishing in
camps in eastern Nepal could be repatriated. "Basically, the US proposal is close to
our position," says a senior government official on condition of anonymity.
Taft and Assistant Secretary for South Asia
Inderfurth are both scheduled to travel to Bhutan Monday after completing their visit to
Nepal. The timing of their visit - coming as it does just when the ministerial-level talks
between Nepal and Bhutan is to begin sometime later this month - is also an indication of
US interest.
"We want to see this resolved by both
countries in a way that is satisfactory to both," Inderfurth said at the news
conference. "...The Bhutanese refugee issue is in the category of unfinished
business."
Though the Bhutanese refugee imbroglio
clearly is high on the agenda of the US delegation, they also made it clear that other
areas of special interest was the treatment of Tibetans who cross into Nepal on their way
to India, economic development of Nepal, and the on-going Maoist insurgency.
Inderfurth declined to talk in detail what he
discussed with Prime Minister Koirala about the Maoist problem, saying only: "We are
obviously concerned about that."
Taft however went into greater detail about
the problems faced by Tibetans crossing into Nepal. Referring to an incident a few weeks
ago when two Tibetans were killed in a clash with police in Dolakha, Taft said,
"there are a number of procedures in Nepal to make the passage (of Tibetans to India)
safer." She also said that the US government would try to free 19 Tibetans jailed by
the Nepal police. These Tibetans were arrested while trying to return to Tibet, she said.
The visiting US officials also delivered a
letter by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Prime Minister Koirala. Sources say
that Albright was herself scheduled to visit Nepal, but had to drop the plans to deal with
the deteriorating security environment in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, in her letter, she reaffirmed
that US policy in South Asia would continue despite the change of administration in
Washington. This was a point which was also hammered forcefully by Inderfurth.
"Whether Republican or Democratic administration (in Washington), I expect a
continuity, not a shift in US policies (in South Asia)," he said.
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