Myanmar will take back displaced Rohingyas

Myanmar has agreed to the repatriation of the Rohingyas to their homeland and implementation of the recommendations made by the final report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. Dhaka and Naypyidaw will form a joint working group in this regard by November 30, reports BSS. It said the decisions were taken at a home minister-level bilateral meeting between Bangladesh and Myanmar officials on security and law enforcement matters in Naypyidaw on Tuesday. Apart from discussing cooperation and security and law enforcement issues, both sides also signed two Memorandums of Understandings during the meeting, BSS reported quoting a message from Home Ministry spokesperson Sharif Mahmood Apu sent from Naypyidaw. One of them was on setting up a Border Liaison Office and the other on Security Cooperation and Dialogue, he said. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who flew to Myanmar on Monday, is leading a delegation to hold talks with the neighbouring country on a number of unresolved issues including the ongoing Rohingya crisis. Sharif also said that the minister was scheduled to make a courtesy call on Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi at 10am (local time) on Wednesday. The Bangladesh delegation is expected to return home on Wednesday ending their three-day visit. Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan heads the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State that released the report on August 24, only one day before the Myanmar security forces’ crackdown was launched in response to attacks on several police outpost and an army base in Rakhine. Since the beginning of that counteroffensive, which the UN has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, more than 603,000 Rohingyas have fled Rakhine and taken refuge in Bangladesh until now. Earlier on Tuesday, senior officials of Bangladesh and Myanmar held another meeting at the secretary level. Mostafa Kamal Uddin, secretary of the Public Security Division of Home Ministry, led the Bangladesh side, while U Tin Myint, permanent secretary of Myanmar’s Home Affairs Ministry, led  his country's 16-member delegation at that meeting.