February 25, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 23, 1423

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PESHAWAR, Feb 24: United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) after a month’s break will restart its repatriation programme for Afghan refugees from Pakistan on March 2, officials said.

Additional commissioner Afghan Commissionerate Col Mohammad Hafiz told Dawn here on Monday that two validation centres would be set up in the tribal area - Alizai in Kurram Agency and Takhta Baig in Khyber Agency - where IRIS recognition machines would be installed to screen returnees.

He said that each returnee family would have to appear at the validation centres before leaving Pakistan. He said the UNHCR would send its mobile teams to refugee camps in The NWFP and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) to register and verify the returnee families.

He said after verification and registration inside the camps, returnees would be brought to one of the validation centres.

Last year, a large number of refugees sneaked back into Pakistan after availing encashment and food facilities at the UNHCR encashment centre following which prompted the UN agency and installed an IRIS machine in Takhta Baig to curb this practice.

Officials said that this time the government would focus on camps as last year only 15 per cent refugees from camps opted for repatriation, and 85 per cent scattered refugees, living in urban and rural areas, went back to their country.

Recently, intelligence agencies had suggested to the government to start forced repatriation from some refugee camps keeping in view the security situation in the country.

The suggestion had been put forward to interior ministry after receiving reports that some elements could create law and order situation in Fata.

The UNHCR has planned to repatriate 400,000 Afghans from Pakistan in this year, while previous year according to the UN agency estimates an overwhelming number of 1.5 million refugees returned home.

Pakistan still hosts over 1.8 registered and unregistered Afghan refugees in various camps. Islamabad, Kabul and the UNHCR had recently set a three year time frame for the repatriation of the remaining 1.8 million refugees from Pakistan.