He made the call when UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner Janet Lim met him at the Secretariat.

Razzaque also noted that hosting the Rohingya population had placed an extra burden upon densely populated Bangladesh. “Although Bangladesh is a poor country, it has been continuing its assistance to the Rohingyas, for humanitarian reasons, he said”

Janet Lim requested the Bangladesh government to take steps to ensure nutritional levels of the Rohingyas who were sheltering in Bangladesh.

In a press release, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni stated that Bangladesh, for reasons of principle, had never pursued forced repatriation of refugees as official policy.

Bangladesh is cooperating with the UNHCR to support the voluntary repatriation of the Rohingya refugees through diplomatic negotiations with Burma, Dr Moni said.

The Foreign Minister also observed that at around 9,000 of the refugees were earlier cleared by the Burmese government in 2005 for return.

The repatriation of Rohingyaz to Burma should remain strictly voluntary, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner Janet Lim stated.

According to one group of refugees, “We will go back to our motherland if the Burmese authorities give us citizenship with Rohingya ethnicity and the same rights as other ethnic groups.”

One Rohingya politician, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that if the Burmese authorities did not grant full citizenship with ethnicity and equal rights to the Rohingya refugees, the refugees would never go back to Burma.

The politician also said, “We fled to Bangladesh from Burma because of persecution and human rights abuses committed by the military regime. We will not jump right back into the same system of abuse by the government. We would rather die in Bangladesh or elsewhere.”