Military

DATE=12/21/01

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=U-N / AFGHAN REFUGEES (L-O)

NUMBER=2-284517

BYLINE=DALE GAVLAK

DATELINE=GENEVA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Afghan refugees are returning by the thousands from Pakistan and Iran hoping for new stability in Afghanistan. VOA's Dale Gavlak in Geneva reports that the United Nations is helping people return home, but says it is under no pressure from neighboring countries to move the refugees.

TEXT: The U-N High Commissioner for Refugees says the number of Afghans returning home has picked up sharply following the end of the recent Muslim holiday.

U-N-H-C-R spokesman Kris Janowski says some two-and-a-half thousand refugees traveled from Pakistan on Thursday alone and several hundred left Iran.

///JANOWSKI ACT///

/// OPT /// We've got now thousands of people going back every day and these are not just the people who were the last to leave that is, those who left after the 11th of September. But also people who left prior to the 11th of September. /// END OPT /// From very sketchy conversations with people who are going back, basically asking them why they are going back, they say they are hoping that there will be new stability and some normality in Afghanistan. So there is some optimism.

///END JANOWSKI ACT///

Mr. Janowski says the U-N is under no pressure from Iran and Pakistan to repatriate Afghan refugees despite the so-called closed border policy both countries have maintained.

///2nd JANOWSKI ACT///

They have been extremely good. The Pakistani government maintained a closed border policy throughout the year. Nonetheless, we estimate that about 200-thousand people have trickled through that closed border since the 11th of September. /// OPT /// So the border was closed but it was "ajar" and people have managed to go through. /// END OPT ///

///END 2nd JANOWSKI ACT///

According to the U-N, there are three-and-a-half million Afghan refugees and nearly one-and-half million Afghans displaced from their homes inside the country. Mr. Janowski says the U-N will concentrate on stabilizing the internally displaced first and then help refugees return home in an organized, large-scale manner in the coming months.

The International Organization for Migration (I-O-M) says it is carrying on its relief work to Afghans displaced inside the country. Niurka Pinero of the I-O-M says eleven trucks will bring winter clothing and tents from Turkmenistan to northwestern Afghanistan beginning Saturday.

///PINERO ACT///

Nine of the trucks are bringing winter items to one-thousand-620 recently displaced families who just last week had no tents. They had nothing.

///END PINERO ACT///

I-O-M says another of its camps for internally displaced Afghans in the northern province of Kunduz has now grown to nearly four-thousand families from some 28-hundred registered in September. (Signed)

NEB/DG/GE/RH