WASHINGTON, Jan 16: Pakistan has decided to close four Afghan refugee camps near its border with Afghanistan to prevent insurgents from seeking shelter there, Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani.

He told Dawn on Tuesday that two camps would be closed in March and the other two later.

The ambassador said that residents of two of the camps would soon be sent home as part of a new programme to better control the 2,500-km shared border. One of the camps was near Peshawar and the other near Quetta.

The four refugee camps hold tens of thousands of the three million Afghan refugees still in Pakistan.

Agreement on the plan was reached on Sunday with elders in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and in the Pukhtun areas of Balochistan. The Afghan government and the UNHCR had also endorsed the plan, said Mr Durrani.

The UNHCR had to provide funds for shifting refugees and along with the Afghan government it would also help create the required infrastructure for the returning Afghans.

Mr Durrani said that the Pakistan government and tribal elders also agreed to build new border posts in the tribal zone where Islamabad had already built 938 posts since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.