KABUL, March 5: Iran’s mass expulsion of illegal Afghan migrants will harm peace and stability in Afghanistan, which does not have the capacity to receive such large numbers, the foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Tehran has vowed to send back as soon as possible about 1.5 million Afghans who are within its borders without papers. Many have gone there to work, with unemployment high in destitute Afghanistan.

“I’m extremely sad over this issue,” Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told reporters in Kabul.

“Afghanistan does not have the capacity to receive and reintegrate into social life this many refugees. The forced repatriation of refugees in mass numbers ... would effect stability and peace in Afghanistan,” he said.

Kabul has repeatedly urged Tehran to halt the expulsions, which have at times seen more than 1,500 people a day forced back across the border. Decades of conflict and drought has cost Afghanistan its basic infrastructure, and the country relies on international aid to function.

A growing insurgency by the extremist Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, has stretched Afghanistan’s government even more.

Concern about the mass expulsions, which began nearly a year ago, prompted the Afghan parliament to fire the country’s refugees minister and foreign minister Spanta. President Hamid Karzai blocked Spanta’s removal.

Afghans began fleeing their country in the 1970s and about eight million were in exile in the 1990s, with most settling in Iran and Pakistan.

Since 2002, about four million refugees have returned home. There are about 900,000 registered refugees in Iran and two million in Pakistan.—AFP