UN, Vietnam fail to revive repatriation

UN, Vietnam fail to revive repatriation

VIETNAM: The UN refugee agency said on Wednesday it had been unable to get assurances from Vietnam that would allow it to resume efforts to repatriate more than 1,000 ethnic minority asylum seekers from Cambodia.

In talks on Tuesday, Hanoi continued to insist that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees should repatriate more of the asylum seekers who fled from Vietnam's Central Highlands before it was allowed to resume visits to check whether returns would be safe.

UNHCR's senior regional representative Jahanshah Assadi said that the agency had managed on Tuesday to get Cambodia's assurance that there would be no repeat of a forcible repatriation of 63 hill people who crossed into the country early this month.

The hill people in the UN camps, also known as Montagnards, fled to Cambodia after a crack down on unprecedented unrest over land and religion in the last year. --Reuters