Interior minister: Iran paid much for Afghans over past 30 years
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Tehran, Jan 18, IRNA -- Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on Tuesday that Iran has paid a heavy cost over past 30 years for supporting the Afghan refugees in Iran.
Mohammad Najjar made the remark to reporters after a meeting with the UN envoy to Afghanistan Stefan di Mistura.
“A total of 276,000 Afghan students are currently studying in Iran. Some 17,000 Afghan nationals have been graduated from the Iranian universities,” he added.
Mohammad Najjar noted that there are currently more than three million Afghan refugees living in Iran.
“We expect the United Nations and international human rights organizations to help Iran to prepare the grounds for return of Afghan refugees to their country,” he added.
Mohammad Najjar further said the Islamic Republic of Iran considers helping the Afghan refugees a humanitarian duty.
“Since the US invasion of Afghanistan by US troops in 2001, the area of poppy cultivation in that country has considerably increased,” he added, calling on the United Nations to uphold the program to encourage the Afghan farmers to replace poppy cultivation with crops.
Mohammad Najjar noted that the volume of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 35 times compared with the year 2001 (before US invasion of Afghanistan), a reference to failure of the U.N. program to provide the farmers with financial assistance to give up poppy cultivation and grow crops instead.
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