But they have some conditions that they want to be met and they have presented them in writing previously through the United Nations and have yet to receive a response though the request is fairly current. At this meeting they presented to us a new proposal for returning. something that they asked if we could send on to the Salvadoran Government they would greatly appreciate. And I did have the occasion the following day to present this to the person in the Salvadoran Government with whom I met who deals with refugee matters. Apparently. from what I was informed from his response verbally to me. they do have much more reasonable requests than they had previously. One of the interesting things is that during the entire time of several years of conflict. while these refugees have been at Mesa Grande. many of them for more than 5 years there. no representative of the Salvadoran Government has ever been invited there and none has ever visited. Now. for the first time. during this directorate meeting we had inside the camp at Mesa Grande. we had not only a request for leaving that country. going back home. made by these directorates for at least some of their population. but we had an expression of willingness on their part to receive the Salvadoran Ambassador to Honduras or any other reasonable representative of the Salvadoran Government to talk about repatriation and related matters. I think that is a very positive sign. In discussion with the refugee officers inside El Salvador the next day I got the impression. the very strong impression. that the Salvadoran Government was about to proceed with sending an emissary into that camp and. hopefully. to establish longterm meaningful relationships with those who were there. with an intent to repatriate as rapidly as possible those who are indeed desirous of coming back to El Salvador. So I come back from this visit to the region. at least in this part of the refugee matter. with great optimism in hopes that within the next few months or possibly over the next couple of years. if it takes that long. we will see finally many of the Salvadorans. who have gone to Honduras. return to El Salvador. I do not know that it is going to be easy and I do not think that our expectations should be up. because we do know that most of those who are in the camps in Honduras are from what is known as the conflictive areas. some of which are not fully under government control to this day inside El Salvador. There still is an MFLN revolutionary movement inside the country. and it is still dangerous.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees