LANDI KOTAL, Oct 1: Authorities are pressurizing a tribe to surrender millions of afgahnis stolen from containers shipped from France to Afghanistan, sources said.

An official told Dawn that a jirga had indicated on Saturday that the stolen amount could be delivered on Sunday.

“We have asked the jirga to deliver the money in Peshawar and not in the tribal region,” the official said.

He said the coins of one, two and five afghani denominations in two containers had arrived from France and reached the Torkham border on a truck on Sept 28.

He said the customs department was not authorized to open containers with goods meant for American forces or the Afghan government but its officials stopped the cargo and weighed it on suspicion that their seals might have been tampered with.

The shipping documents showed the cargo to weigh 52.5 tons but its weight turned out to be 31.5 tons, he said.

He said the containers were driven back to the customs headquarters in Peshawar for examination. Diplomats from the Afghan consulate were asked to oversee the examination, he said.

When the containers were opened, it transpired that what had been shown as brassware in the shipping documents was Afghan coins, he said.

He said 40 cartons of the consignment, containing six million coins, were found missing.

Afghanistan presently uses notes and the coins were to be the first to be issued in the country, sources said.

Officials said the consignee of the shipment, the Afghan Bank, had not informed Pakistan about the nature of the cargo, otherwise Islamabad would have made security arrangements for its transportation.

“The shipping documents say the contents were brassware and the cargo was being handled by a private shipping company,” an official said.