We'll become unable to take new Myanmar refugees, warns B'desh

United Nations: Bangladesh's foreign secretary said Thursday his country will need to stop accepting more refugees from Myanmar and accused its government of being "obstructionist" about bringing back more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence.

Myanmar, meanwhile, continued to insist it is taking steps toward their return. Its ambassador appealed for patience from the UN Security Council, but several members complained about what they saw as lagging progress nearly a year after a council delegation traveled to see the crisis firsthand.

After a renewed flare-up in violence in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, new refugees are still crossing the border to Bangladesh, Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque said.

"As far as repatriation is concerned, the situation has gone far from bad to worse," he told the council, adding that his country "would no longer be in a position to accommodate more people from Myanmar." He didn't say when that might occur. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017, when Rohingya militants attacked Myanmar security forces in Rakhine, triggering a massive military retaliation that UN investigators have called genocide. The exodus came after hundreds of thousands of other Rohingya escaped previous bouts of violence and persecution.

Most people in Buddhist-majority Myanmar don't accept the Rohingya Muslims as a native ethnic group. They are, instead, viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though generations of Rohingya have lived in Myanmar.

Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982 and lack access to education and hospitals. The UN General Assembly approved a resolution in December strongly condemning "gross human rights violations and abuses" committed against Myanmar's Rohingya.

Myanmar's government denies claims of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The country rejects the UN investigators' work and the General Assembly resolution as biased. Myanmar has made agreements with Bangladesh and UN agencies to repatriate the Rohingya, but it hasn't happened. A plan for refugees to begin returning last November was scrapped because officials couldn't find anyone willing to go. Myanmar had said it was ready to receive them, but U.N. officials, human rights activists and others had called for waiting until the refugees' safety in Myanmar could be assured.