The operation to repatriate from Bangladesh thousands of Burmese refugees -- drawn from the Rohingya ethnic group -- is being suspended for a-month.

Officials in Bangladesh say some of the refugees who had previously agreed to return to Burma are now refusing to do so because they've been receiving threats.

Burma has agreed to take back seven-thousand of an estimated twenty-one thousand Rohingya refugees, who fled to Bangladesh in the early 1990's.

But correspondents say only around a-hundred of them have so far returned to Burma.