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UN allowed into refugee camps

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will soon be allowed access to Burmese refugee camps on the Thai border for the first time, international aid workers say.

The UNHCR's permanent presence - coming after growing concern that thousands of refugees might be sent back across the border - is widely seen as giving much greater security to the 120,000 or so people in the camps.

But the Thai Interior Ministry yesterday renewed its threat to forcibly repatriate 10,000 ethnic Karen refugees to Burma if they continued to refuse to move to a new camp deeper inside Thailand.

Bangkok said the move was to protect the refugees from cross-border attacks and stop them illegally logging in a national park.

Thailand has until now refused to let the UNHCR play any direct role in the many camps dotted along the border for fear of creating a permanent refugee presence.

The Thais refuse even to use the word refugees, calling them 'displaced persons'.

Hardliners in the Thai military as well as political and business interests keen to pander to Rangoon's regime have voiced increasing unhappiness about playing host to so many people.

Getting the UNHCR into the camps is a victory for Western governments who have quietly lobbied Bangkok to make a more open commitment to safeguarding the refugees.

Veteran aid workers noted that the UNHCR had been criticised for being 'too political' and not pressuring host governments to do more for refugees.

Nevertheless, one refugee expert said yesterday that 'any UNHCR presence will lead to much greater international leverage' and make it harder for the Thai Army to push back arrivals who do not make it to camps.

Promises of UNHCR participation in the camps have recently been made by senior officials to at least five Western embassies in Bangkok, and to the organisation.

Thailand has been trying to avoid a repeat of the unhappy experience of playing host to hundreds of thousands of Cambodia refugees after the Khmer Rouge capture of Phnom Penh in 1975.

It resented being blamed for the often-ugly conditions in the Khmer refugee camps, which closed 20 years later.

There has been a surge in the number of Burmese fleeing to Thailand since Rangoon's military regime gained control of nearly all border areas.

Diplomats privately praise the three-month-old Government of Chuan Leekpai for being more sympathetic than previous administrations to refugees' plight.

But they note that the softer line comes as Thailand is bidding for financial help from the West to help it overcome a financial crisis.

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