Laos seeks clarification of Thai FM's statements on Hmong

None of Hmong ethnic minorities who migrated from Laos to Thailand should be regarded as "political asylum seeker" since they are normal economic migrants, the spokesman said.

 Kasit said in a telephone interview from Washington after a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week that 158 Hmong who were being detained in a camp in Nong Khai province were asylum seekers and eligible to settle in third countries. 

Only some 5,000 Hmong in Phetchabun's Ban Huay Nam Khao shelter are normal economic migrants who would be repatriated to Laos, Kasit said.

Khenthong said Laos and Thailand had previously considered Lao people held in detention camps in both Phetchabun and Nong Khai provinces as being illegal migrants, not refugees.

"I find it hard to believe that Mr Kasit, a senior diplomat with much experience in foreign affairs, would make such remarks," the Lao spokesman was quoted as saying by staterun daily Vientiane Times.

"But if he did truly make such a comment, I think it is a serious infringement of our two governments' consensus that the illegal migrant issue will be addressed by our two countries without interference from third parties."

Vientiane Times reported that in 2006, the governments of Laos and Thailand agreed to treat Lao citizens illegally entering Thailand as illegal migrants and not refugees.

The Lao Foreign Ministry spokesman asked the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs for clarification on the alleged remarks and whether or not the Thai government had changed its stance on the issue.

Director of the ThailandLaos Border Affairs Division of the Department of Border Affairs, Colonel Kumron Kearwichyajane, told reporters in Laos that the 158 migrants detained in Nong Khai province will be returned to Laos after some 5,000 illegal migrants in a detention camp in Phetchabun province return to Laos later this year.

The recently returned 298 migrants will be temporarily resettled in a camp in Borikhamxay province while their paperwork is completed before returning to their original home towns.