REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, YANGON - A day after Doctors Without Borders announced it was being expelled from Myanmar, the government said negotiations with the organization were ongoing and that the group might be allowed to resume operations everywhere but Rakhine, a state plagued by bloody bouts of sectarian violence.

After intense international pressure, presidential spokesman Ye Htut told The Associated Press on Saturday that Rakhine's government had asked for the humanitarian group's operations to be suspended in the state, but that its work would not be disrupted elsewhere in the country.

The aid group was told earlier this week that its license was being revoked, in part because it was hiring "Bengalis," the name Myanmar's government uses to refer to the long-persecuted Rohingya ethnic Muslim minority. Some of the group's HIV/AIDS clinics were closed Friday.