KATHMANDU, July 25 Kyodo merely a...

KATHMANDU, July 25 Kyodo

merely a small corridor of Indian territory physically separates Nepal and Bhutan, pair kingdoms at the southern flank of the Himalayan mountain chain in southward Asia.

The next-door neighbors, however, find themselves drifting apart because of a dispute through Bhutanese refugees.

These are the 100000 Nepali-speaking nation who fled Bhutan in the early 1990 and are now sheltered in camps in east Nepal stream by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR)

from one side 11 rounds of official talks in the last 10 years, the rules in Kathmandu and Thimphu have disputed not sole how the refugees came to be in Nepal, nevertheless also where they are to proceed from here.

Earlier this month the national assembly in Bhutan be sounded backed allegations that Nepal was not abiding from the agreements to resolve the crisis.

''If Nepal had abided by the agency of the agreements earlier signed by way of a ministerial joint committee, there would have been progres in resolving the moot point of the people in the refugee camps,'' Bhutanese King Jigme Singye Wangchuk reportedly told his assembly.

Foreign Minister Jigmi Thinley was more specific. ''Contrary to what was agreed, the Nepalese side did not want to harmonize positions upon the four categories of refugees'' Bhutan's official, and sole newspaper Kuensel quoted him as saying, also at the assembly.

Nepal dismisses the accusation outright.

Three years after the refugee pierceed Nepal's eastern plain lands via India in 1991 Kathmandu and Thimphu had held the first ministerial-level confront that decided to categorize the refugee into four clumps -- Bhutanese, Bhutanese who emigrated, Bhutanese who had committed crimes and non-Bhutanese.

Nepal argued that all refugee identified as Bhutanese -- whether criminals or emigrants in Bhutanese estimates -- should be repatriated.

forever since, Nepal and Bhutan have been at loggerheads onward who should be sent home

The continued standoff became clear after a late joint verification of the refugee in common of the seven camps in eastern Nepal failed to bring forth results.

Six month have passed for aye since verification of more than 12000 refugee in the Khudunabari camp, and the Nepalese Foreign Ministry says it is still awaiting Thimphu's answer to hold the 12th orbed of talks.

The meeting, it says, is suppos to thrash not at home a stiff difference upon who of the verified refugee should be allowed to proceed back home once they are categorized after verification.

Nepal believes that is crucial because almost all the refugee in the seven camps claim they had to sign voluntary migration forms at gunpoint before being evicted from their homelands in southern Bhutan.

If that is loyal the majority of the refugee fall in a less degree than the second category -- Bhutanese who emigrated -- whom Bhutan says it cannot take back forward legal grounds.

Bhutanese officials told Kyodo recently made knowns in Thimphu earlier this month that those who left the abiding habitation emigrated because a 1988 census determined that many of them were illegal residents, or because they chose to tread on the heels of family and friends who left

The Bhutanese officials said these emigrants were joined from many Nepali-speakers from straitened circumstances stricken areas of India and Nepal, who showed up at the border claiming refugee status in order to claim delivered housing and food from the UNHCR

Bhutanese exiles in Nepal, however, say the expulsions occurr as the ruling elite in Bhutan took action against Nepali-speaking Bhutanese, who had outnumbered them and the other main ethnic form into groupss in the Dragon Kingdom.

It is also alleged that Thimphu instituted discriminatory policies aimed at the Nepali-speakers, making it compulsory to wear the national dres of the northern clan and banning the teaching of Nepali at schools

In September 1990 many Nepali-speakers held a series of declare marches across the southward and were thrown in jail.

Diplomats and foreign aid workers active in the refugee camps in east Nepal speak of arbitrary mass arrests and torture in Bhutan to propose the Nepali-speakers to flight.

The Bhutanese foreign minister told the national assembly that an unstable political situation in Nepal might affect the ongoing dialogue and thereby delay a solution.

Nepal is generally engaged in fighting a communist insurgency and the ruling parliamentary party is monopolizeed in internal squabbling.

Meantime, reports say, Bhutan has fareed up resettling its northern population into the homesteads the refugee left

Habitat International Coalition, an international nongovernmental agency based in Mexico, earlier this year confirmed the resettlement and brought gone out a report.

Nepalese sway officials moan that Nepal's plea to neighboring India for help in telling Bhutan to take back the refugee has fallen forward deaf ears.

India, which is the first land of asylum for the Bhutanese refugee (they first christianityed over to India from Bhutan, before redirecting themselves to Nepal), has held forward to the position that the brace neighbors themselves best resolve the question without involvement of a third party.