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Forced Repatriation from Germany Delayed Until October
BONN, June 5 (Reuters) -- Germany can not start sending its 320,000
Bosnian refugees home in July, Interior Minister Manfred Kanther said
on Wednesday. October is the earliest date at which conditions could be
right for forced repatriations, Kanther said. About half of all the Bosnian
refugees outside former Yugoslavia are in Germany. The 16 German states
agreed a month ago that Kanther should set a date to start sending them
back. Some had hoped for a July start.
In a letter to North Rhine-Westphalia state interior minister Franz-Josef Kniola, Kanther noted that Germany had
agreed visa-free two-way travel from July 1 with transit countries for refugees wanting to visit their homes, but had not yet secured Bosnia's formal agreement to accept the refugees. "Even allowing for the travel possibilities we have just created, I do not consider that (conditions allowing forced repatriation) will be established before October 1," he wrote.
Bosnia's Serbs have given little indication they will accept the return of mostly-Muslim refugees to territory which they occupy, as stipulated in the Dayton peace accord, prompting refugee support groups to urge that repatriations be delayed. Muslim refugees trying to return have been attacked by Serbs who say the land now belongs to them, and the United Nations and NATO say such attacks represent a major threat to the fragile peace process.
Kanther said talks with the Bosnian Serb administration had so far yielded no progress, and added it was possible that repatriation would initially have to be restricted to refugees from the territory of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation. But he rejected Kniola's proposal that Bonn pledge to letall refugees stay at least until April 1, 1997, and said repatriations should be handled flexibly as current residence permits expired. Kanther also said progress on rebuilding Bosnia's economy would be a strong incentive for refugees to return voluntarily.
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United Nations UN High Commissioner for Refugees' RefWorld Magazine
United Nations Biographie Manfred Kanther
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