Myanmar ready to take back refugees

dhaka — Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Monday to set up a “working group” to plan the repatriation of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh to escape an army crackdown, the Bangladeshi foreign minister said.

The United Nations has called the exodus of 507,000 Rohingya since late August the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency, and says Buddhistmajority Myanmar is engaging in ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

We are looking forward to a peaceful solution to the crisis Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, Bangladesh Foreign Minister

Myanmar denies that. It says its forces are battling Rohingya “terrorists” who triggered the latest wave of violence with coordinated attacks on the security forces on August 25.

Myanmar says more than 500 people have been killed since, most of them insurgents, whom it has accused of attacking civilians and setting most of the fires that have reduced to ashes more than half of more than 400 Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine State.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said he and Myanmar official Kyaw Tint Swe had agreed in their talks to set up the working group to draw up plans for repatriation.

“We are looking forward to a peaceful solution to the crisis,” Ali told reporters. Kyaw Tint Swe did not speak to the media and government spokesmen in Myanmar were not immediately available for comment. —