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UNHCR Chief Calls For Peace To Help Return Afghans
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 5 (News Agencies) - U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers called for peace to stem Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis as he met Afghan refugees in squalid camps in northwestern Pakistan Saturday.
The UNHCR chief visited the overflowing Shamshatoo and Jalozai camps near Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where more than 170,000 Afghans have sought shelter since September.
Another 500,000 people fleeing drought and war between the ruling Taliban militia and opposition forces have been living in displacement camps inside Afghanistan.
Lubbers praised the efforts of U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations to help the uprooted Afghans.
"I saw disabled men working and I saw women making efforts. This is a good thing. I saw children in their school and they are your future," he told the refugees.
Lubbers regretted that fighting was continuing in Afghanistan despite a drought in the country and called for peace to enable refugees to return to their homeland.
"As soon as peace is returned, you will go back with your families," said Lubbers who arrived from Afghanistan on Thursday for talks with Pakistani officials.
"You will remember these strange people of so many countries, who came here to help you," he said.
UNHCR spokesman Yusuf Hassan has said that the makeshift Jalozai camp, where some 80,000 Afghans live, could become a "death camp" with conditions poised to deteriorate with the onset of the hot season.
The provincial government has refused to provide a new site for fresh arrivals from Afghanistan, citing lack of funds.
Pakistan has said people in the new flux are not genuine refugees. It recently faced criticism for deporting some of them.
Pakistan already plays host to some 1.2 million refugees, plus an estimated two million illegal immigrants who fled Afghanistan during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and the ensuing civil war.
Lubbers later met with Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar who said, "A large majority of the nearly 200,000 new arrivals were economic migrants."
Their exodus could have been prevented if food and relief were available to them inside Afghanistan, a foreign ministry statement quoted Sattar as telling Lubbers in Islamabad.
He urged the U.N. and the international community to focus on provisions of humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan so that the Afghans afflicted by the unprecedented drought do not leave their country in search of food.
The minister, taking "serious note of the unfair media criticism" against Pakistan, said the government had not obstructed the provision of relief assistance to the Afghans either in Jalozai or elsewhere, it said.
The government has decided not to push the new arrivals back into Afghanistan, he added.
Lubbers agreed that the international community's response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan was "far short of the need on the ground."
He stressed the need for extending humanitarian assistance both inside Afghanistan as well as for Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, the statement said.
The UNHCR chief called for the need "to de-link the rehabilitation agenda from the political agenda." He also called for reactivating a tripartite commission involving Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UNHCR to devise an "effective strategy" for the repatriation of Afghan refugees.
Lubbers stressed the need for cessation of hostilities inside Afghanistan in order to commence rehabilitation activities, the statement said.
He also called upon the Taliban to moderate their policies with regard to allowing women to be employed in the humanitarian sector.
Earlier he told reporters in Peshawar that his agency would work with the Pakistan government to assess genuine refugees.
"We will see family to family what the situation is and then conclude what is fair," he said.
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