COX'S BAZAR, Jan 22 (Agencies): The repatriation of Rohingya Muslims will not begin as planned, Bangladesh said Monday, with authorities admitting "a lot of preparation" was still needed.
Dhaka had been due to start the huge process on January 23, after agreeing a two-year timescale with Yangon.
But Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam announced Monday that there was much more work to be done.
"We have not made the preparations required to send back people from tomorrow. A lot of preparations are still needed," Kalam told the news agency.
"The list of people to be sent back is yet to be prepared, their verification and setting up of transit camps is remaining."
He did not immediately give a new date for the repatriations to begin
The decision comes as tensions have risen in camps holding hundreds of thousands of refugees, some of whom are opposing their transfer back to Myanmar because of lack of security guarantees.
Myanmar said it was ready to take back the returning Rohingya.
"We are ready to accept them once they come back. On our part, the preparation is ready," Ko Ko Naing, director general of Myanmar's Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, told Reuters by phone.
He declined to comment on whether Bangladesh had informed Myanmar about the delay.
At the Palongkhali refugee camp, near the Naf river that marks the border between the two countries, a group of Rohingya leaders gathered early on Monday morning with a loudspeaker and a banner listing a set of demands for their return to Myanmar.
These include security guarantees, the granting of citizenship and the group's recognition in Myanmar's list of ethnic minorities. The Rohingya are also asking that homes, mosques and schools that were burned down or damaged in the military operation be rebuilt.
Since August last year around 688,000 Muslim Rohingya have escaped over the border into Bangladesh in the wake of a military-led campaign in Rakhine state that the UN says amounted to "ethnic cleansing".
They poured into ill-equipped and over-crowded camps, bringing with them harrowing tales of rape, murder and torture at the hands of Myanmar's feared army or Buddhist mobs.
After a global outcry, which included loud criticism of Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the two countries agreed earlier this month that the refugees would be returned to Myanmar, in a process they said would take around two years.
