03 October 2004	Sunday	17 Shaban 1425

PESHAWAR, Oct 2: International Organization for Migration (IOM) has expressed concern over preventing women by certain Afghan communities from on-going registration process for the Oct 9 presidential elections.

In a statement issued here on Saturday, IOM Director of Out of Country Registration and Voting programme Peter Erben said that it was disappointing that some Afghan communities were refusing to let women take part in the elections.

He said that a small number of polling stations had not been because a few Afghan communities did not allow women to participate in the registration process.

"On the first day, women constituted only 22 per cent of the registrants", Mr Erben said, adding that the organization expected more women to take part in the process.

He claimed that an estimated 140,000 Afghans living in Pakistan had registered themselves on the first day of the three- day registration process in Pakistan.

The statement said that on Friday, in Balochistan, the NWFP and Islamabad, 1657 registration stations operated in 620 locations.

"We have figures in from 1400 of these stations and 120,000 Afghans were registered at these stations," the director said. He said that the security provided by the Pakistan government was excellent and the process was under way smoothly.