DUBAI, June 9: Afghanistan and Pakistan have edged closer to agreement on how to return more than 2 million Afghan refugees to their homeland, an official of the UN refugee agency has said.

“We have now reached an agreement on the language of the text” on the voluntary repatriation, said Salvatore Lombardo, UNHCR representative for Afghanistan, after the two sides held talks on Friday in Dubai. “I think in that respect it (meeting) was quite successful.”

Pakistan has been pushing to repatriate the refugees to Afghanistan over a three-year period, mainly in response to international criticism over cross-border attacks by Taliban militants who Pakistan says often take shelter in refugee camps. The two sides have been meeting every three months under UNHCR auspices.

The draft text, Mr Lombardo said, is going back to the two governments for approval before signing. Details of the plan were not available in Dubai.

Since the 2001 fall of the Taliban, over 3 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan, including over 220,000 refugees so far this year. It is the biggest repatriation operation ever undertaken in the world.

The refugees fled to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Most are ethnic Pashtuns originating from Afghan border provinces, and 90 per cent of the refugees say they have no land there. More than 2.15 million still remain in Pakistan, mostly women, children and elderly.

Mr Lombardo said the Pakistani plan envisages the refugees returning to their original homes in Afghanistan, not merely to new camps across the border. “Those who are landless, the government will give them land,” said an Afghan minister, Abdul Qader Ahadi.—AP