March 19, 2003	Wednesday	Muharram 15, 1424

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PESHAWAR, March 18: UNHCR, Pakistan and Afghanistan after a year-long negotiations signed a tripartite agreement on Monday to resolve the 23-year-old Afghan refugee problem, one of the world’s longest running humanitarian concerns.

The tripartite agreement which was signed in Brussels, provides for the UN refugee agency to continue assisting the voluntary repatriation of the remaining 1.8 million Afghan refugees from Pakistan for three more years starting from 2003, followed by a screening of the remaining population.

A press release issued here on Tuesday said that the programme would be overseen by a six-person tripartite commission composed of two members from each of the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan and from the UNHCR. The commission, which would review the repatriation programme annually, would meet alternately in the two countries every three months.

The new agreement provides a formal framework between the two countries for cooperating in the management of repatriation, one of the main bilateral concerns for Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is aimed at smoothing both repatriation of the refugees to Afghanistan and their reintegration into their homeland.

The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Afghan High-Level Strategic Forum attended by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, Afghanistan’s Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Enayatullah Nazari and Pakistan’s Minister of States and Frontier Regions Division (Safron) Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao.

On the completion of the repatriation programme the UNHCR would carry out screening “for the residual caseload to identify Afghan citizens with a continued need of international protection and distinguish them from economic migrants”.