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East Timor: UN agency makes final push to return refugees before independence

East Timor: UN agency makes final push to return refugees before independence

With just over two weeks to go before East Timor’s independence, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today said it was concentrating its efforts on helping as many of the 55,000 remaining refugees return home.

Over the last month, more than 6,000 people have returned to East Timor, the highest monthly repatriation rate in more than two years, a spokesman for the agency said in Geneva. Since the beginning of UNHCR’s repatriation operation in October 1999, nearly 205,000 East Timorese have returned home.

In order to help encourage as many of the remaining refugees to return, East Timor’s President-elect Xanana Gusmão has been working with UNHCR to encourage people to repatriate and to work towards reconciliation, spokesman Peter Kessler said in Geneva.

Mr. Gusmão is currently in South Sulawesi with the head of UNHCR’s operations in Dili in a joint effort to broker the return of some 1,000 East Timorese refugees. Earlier Mr. Gusmão and UNHCR staff travelled to neighbouring West Timor where mass meetings were held with refugees in Atambua and Kefa.