KATHMANDU (UCAN) -- The Bhutanese king opted not to attend this year's South Asian summit in Colombo on July 29-31, further frustrating some 120,000 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal who had hoped a meeting between their king and the Nepali premier would increase their chance of returning to their homeland.

King Jigme Singye Wangchuk's announcement came a few days after Nepali Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala told parliament July 19 that he would raise the issue of the refugees, some 90,000 of them Hindus, at talks with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who heads a Hindu party.

This was the first time the Bhutanese monarch did not personally attend a South Asia Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit. Bhutan's head of government Jigme Thinley represented the king, who claimed that the recent process of democratic reforms prevented him from leaving the country.

Meanwhile, the United Front for Democracy in Bhutan, a Bhutanese refugee organization in Nepal, issued a press release July 25 criticizing the king's absence from the summit as depriving "Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala of holding any serious and conclusive discussions on the refugee issue."

Even though they live in camps which some regard as the best-managed in the world, the refugees continue to dream of returning to Bhutan, a country that has the highest per capita income in South Asia, has more than 70 percent forest cover, and offers free education and health care to its citizens.

In a royal edict dated June 10 and addressed to the Speaker of the Bhutanese National Assembly, the Bhutanese king handed down to the assembly the power to oust him and the right to name the members of the eight-person cabinet.

"I see the devolution of power to the National Assembly and thereby to the people as genuine," remarked Bhutanese Kunley Tshering in a letter to the editor in the July 24 issue of the "Kathmandu Post."

Some readers believe Tshering is probably a Bhutanese taking up college in Nepal, on a grant from the Bhutanese government, which provides free education to its citizens even abroad.

However, refugee leaders such as Rakesh Chhetri, a Catholic who is executive director of the Centre for Protection of Minorities and against Racism and Discrimination in Bhutan (CEMARD), have been skeptical of the king's moves.

Chhetri told UCA News July 25, "Jigme Thinley, when he had the post of home secretary of Bhutan a few years ago, was the co-architect of the sinister theory of illegal immigrants that branded the refugees as citizens of Nepal."

"Later, Thinley, as the Bhutanese ambassador to the United Nations office in Geneva, propagated this idea all over Europe and America," he added.

Chhetri also observed that not a single ethnic Lhotshampa is among the six new members of the cabinet chosen by the National Assembly. "This is the first time in 20 years that not a single Lhotshampa is represented," he said.

Most Lhotshampas or Southern Bhutanese, one of three major ethnic groups of Bhutan, have become refugees since a purging of "alien" Nepalis and supposed pro-democracy rebels by the Drukpa-dominated government in the early 1990s.

Lhotshampas are ethnic Nepalese who claim that they migrated generations ago into Bhutan from Sikkim, a country that was annexed by India in 1974, Nepal and the Indian district of Darjeeling.

Seven rounds of ministerial level talks between Nepal and Bhutan have failed to resolve the refugee issue, with the last round in early 1996 breaking off.

Nepali-language papers in Kathmandu, have also reported that hundreds of refugees are slowly acquiring Nepali citizenship, leaving the camps illegally, and seeking work in Nepal.

END