Military

DATE=04/09/02

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=UNHCR/AFGHAN REPATRIATION

NUMBER=2-288481

BYLINE= LISA SCHLEIN

DATELINE= GENEVA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The first group of Afghan refugees who had fled to Iran has started returning home. Lisa Schlein reports the United Nations Refugee Agency transported 146 people on Tuesday and believes as many as 400-thousand Afghan refugees will come home from Iran this year.

TEXT: The U-N Refugee Agency, the U-N-H-C-R, acknowledges that the repatriation program has gotten off to a slow start. But U-N-H-C-R spokesman, Kris Janowski, says the Agency expects the rate of returning refugees to pick up to as many as 16-hundred Afghans daily, six days a week.

///JANOWSKI ACT///

Iran hosts more than one-point-five million Afghan refugees. We also had a tentative plan, as you remember, to have 400-thousand come back from Pakistan, but it looks as half of that yearly number has already gone back. We have almost done 200-thousand. From Pakistan, it is certainly going to exceed 400-thousand. We will see how things go with Iran.

///END ACT///

Pakistan is home to about two million Afghan refugees. Many fled Afghanistan more than two decades ago because of war, drought and poverty.

The unsettled situation in the country, is given as the reason the repatriation started with just a trickle of returnees. Mr. Janowski says plans to transport the refugees to Nimruz province, in Afghanistan, had to be changed because of fighting around the area. He says the U-N-H-C-R was forced to use the crossing point at Islam Qala, which is west of Herat. Mr. Janowski notes security problems have disrupted repatriation efforts from Pakistan, as well.

///2ND JANOWSKI ACT///

We had to halt repatriation temporarily, repatriation from Pakistan into Afghanistan because of a bomb attack in the Jalalabad area and protests from poppy farmers in that area, the Jalalabad area. This resulted in a backlog building up in our registration point in Pakistan, with some 18-thousand people waiting there to be registered.

///END ACT///

Mr. Janowski says Afghan refugees in Iran can register for repatriation at any of nine centers, set up throughout the country. After that, they will be transported to the border, where they will be briefed about the danger of landmines and security conditions inside Afghanistan. Then they will be transported by bus to the provincial capital of their choice. Families returning from Iran are given supplies including plastic tarpaulins, stoves and blankets, as well as clothes, some cash and food to help them get started in their new lives back home.

The return of the refugees from Iran is the result of a landmark deal struck last week by Iran, Afghanistan and the United Nations refugee agency. (Signed)

NEB/LS/FC