NATIONAL 1 (Spotlight Weekly)]

Yet Another Round

Once again the dialogue between the two Himalayn Kingdoms prolongs, this time too due to Bhutan's time buying move

By A CORRESPONDENT

The outcome of the latest refugee-talks between Nepal and Bhutan remained a mystery until the Foreign Ministry officials who had visited Thimpu last week returned home. Even as the secretary level talks had begun on February 14 and ended on 17 this month, there was no official information as to what had happened during the bureaucratic level talks.

Bhutanese refugees : Still uncertain future

Foreign Ministry itself was oblivious about the outcome of the talk. It was good three days after the talk was over, the news of the refugee talks appeared in the dailies. As the anxiety was still on the rise, Foreign Secretary Murari Raj Sharma, who had headed the five member Nepalese delegation to Thimpu, had no good news to share.

As it has been happening in the last eight years, Bhutan once again demanded time to discuss at its home some issues that had cropped up during the talks. And that is not all it has asked for. After that discussion, it has proposed yet another secretary level talks in the first half of next month.

If that talk ends conclusively, then only with the ninth Joint Ministerial Level Committee (JMLC) meeting will take place. There have been eight ministerial level talks between the two Himalayan Kingdoms on the refugee issue. Yet, the problem stands where it was. More than 100,000 refugees still continue languishing in seven camps in eastern Nepal.

So, what happened this time that made the Bhutanese side, once again, demand time for consultation among themselves? "During the talk that focussed on the verification of the refugees, several issues came out that Bhutan said it was not ready to deal with," said Sharma. "Therfore, they wanted to discuss the issue among themselves and then only sit with us."

Almost all the talks in the past have focussed on verification of refugees categorised into four groups: Bonafide Bhutanese, Bhutanese who emigrated, Bhutanese who have committed crimes, and non Bhutanese nationals. During all these dialogues Bhutan insisted that it would take back only the first category refugees and that it cannot take back the rest three groups under its legal provisions.

Foreign Ministry sources say Nepal, during the latest round of talks, proposed the idea of verifying the refugees visiting all the camps. Although the Bhutanese side gave positive indication on the camp-visit idea, they had reservations on the Nepalese proposal of interviewing the heads of the each refugee family.

The Bhutanese delegation headed by Bhutanese Foreign Secretary Ugen Tshering pressed on the idea of interviewing each and every refugee memeber in the families, the source said. "We did not agree to that because it does not make sense interviewing the minors in the families."

It is this difference on the verification process that keeps the refugee talks inconclusive still. Anlaysts fear yet another hitch in the talks: Bhutan's stand on taking back only the refugees under the first category -- Bonafide citizens.

Of course, Foreign Ministry officials claim that Bhutan, during the eighth JMLC meet in Kathmandu in September last year, had agreed to take back category two refugees if they were found to have left their homeland under threat.

But since it has not agreed to do so in black and white and since it has its legal provision to keep the rest of the three categories outside its boundary, doubts loom large if the Dragon Kingdom will live upto its words.