PESHAWAR, Feb 26: The Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) is looking for sites in the province to settle about 263,522 registered Afghan refugees to be relocated from tribal areas, officials said.

Following the federal government's directives, CAR has asked its district administrators to identify feasible sites for new camps, a source said. Though Home Secretary Abdul Karim Qasuria, who also holds the additional charge of CAR, expressed ignorance about the relocation of refugees from Fata to settle areas, the UNHCR officials confirmed the plan.

Talking to Dawn, UNHCR spokesman Jack Redden said: "The relocation plan has been discussed, but it is still in the early stage". The proposed relocation would need a lot of funds but the UN refugee agency had no allocations for the purpose in the current budget, he said.

Well-placed sources said the federal government had directed CAR to wind up all camps in tribal areas and settle the refugees in the province, which already hosts about one million registered refugees.

The sources said Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who visited Kabul last month, had received complaints from his hosts that Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were using the refugee camps in the tribal area for launching attacks on the Afghan territory.

"The CAR is working out a plan to shift 263,522 registered Afghans from the tribal area, living in 18 refugees' tented villages for the last three decades," an official said.

He said the prime minister had pledged to provide Rs150 million for the relocation plan and added that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees had refused to finance the plan.

"The federal ministry for state and frontier regions has issued instructions to CAR to remove all refugee camps from Fata to the province," the source said. The CAR maintains six refugees' tented villages in the Kurram Agency, five in Bajaur Agency, four in North Waziristan Agency, and one each in Khyber Agency, South Waziristan Agency, Orakzai Agency and Frontier Region Peshawar.

The NWFP has 32 such villages and official statistics show that Peshawar district alone shelters some 482,148 registered Afghans. After 9/11, the government had set up camps in tribal areas adjacent to the Afghan border to accommodate the fresh influx of refugees.

These camps were established in Kurram, Khyber and Bajaur agencies. The Shalman camp in Khyber Agency is being wound up from March 8.

REPATRIATION: Meanwhile, the UNHCR announced on Thursday that it would resume the voluntary repatriation programme on March 2 to assist the Afghans willing to return home. All returning refugees over the age of six years will pass through the Iris Verification Centres in Peshawar and Quetta.