ISLAMABAD, Feb 17: The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is constrained to cut down operations and staff in Pakistan facing budget requirements of $125.5 million to continue the repatriation of Afghan refugees in the region.

Some 160 staff members have been forced to give up their jobs with the UNHCR in Pakistan, as the UN body faced a 25 per cent cut in its budgetary allocations for the year.

Officially, more than a million registered Afghan refugees still remained in Pakistan. However, the unofficial estimates put the number of un-registered Afghan refugees merged with the population all over the country into millions.

It is said the UNHCR would continue to deliver basic services at the refugee camps, but the agency would streamline the assistance programme in the camps established after Sept 2001, through a strategy of camp consolidation.

"The UNHCR will require $125.5 million to continue the repatriation, reintegration and assistance programme for Afghan refugees and returnees through 2004.

It anticipates the closure of a number of offices in Afghanistan and staff reductions (international and national) of up to 40 per cent. UNHCR staff numbers are also being decreased in Iran and Pakistan," UNHCR funding updates for the current financial year revealed.

With international assistance and commitment to Bonn agreement and reconstruction in Afghanistan, the 2002- 03 Afghan repatriation and reintegration operation was one of UNHCR's largest programmes.

However, sources said, a number of factors which preceded the US-led bombing campaign on a war-ravaged country left in ruins by the former USSR, are returning to add to the fears that Afghanistan is returning to anarchy.

"Most worrying of all is the fact that not only are some parts of the country becoming increasingly unsafe for foreigners and Afghans working with assistance and development organizations, but that in some areas, local residents have to deal with abusive commanders, illegal taxation, forced recruitment, or difficulties in accessing their land," a UN agency said in its report.

Moreover, the UNHCR suspended assisted voluntary repatriationfrom Pakistan and put a number of activities on hold, pending an improvement in the security situation.

Of late, the UN bodies which had been issuing reports that poppy cultivation was decreasing in Afghanistan are now sounding renewed alerts that "despite efforts to curb poppy cultivation, output has increased and Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium-producing country."

The UN agencies emphasize the need for the international community to support efforts by Afghanistan and its neighbours to improve security. In 2004, a report said, UNHCR's budget, like those of other UN agencies operating in Afghanistan, would be included in the transitional administration's national development budget which served as key fund-raising instrument in Afghanistan for 2003.