PAKISTAN: HEAD OF UN REFUGEE AGENCY URGES PAKISTAN TO ACCEPT THOSE FLEEING U.S. AIR STRIKES IN AFGHANISTAN

Record ID: 275271

  • Title: PAKISTAN: HEAD OF UN REFUGEE AGENCY URGES PAKISTAN TO ACCEPT THOSE FLEEING U.S. AIR STRIKES IN AFGHANISTAN
  • Date: 29th October 2001
  • Summary: (W4)CHAMAN, PAKISTAN (OCTOBER 28, 2001) (REUTERS) 1. LV BORDER POINT OF CHAMAN WITH CROWD OF REFUGEES 0.04 2. MV UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES (UNHCR), RUUD LUBBERS BEING BRIEFED 0.09 3. SLV BORDER GUARDS 0.13 4. SLV REFUGEES ON AFGHAN SIDE OF BORDER 0.17 5. SCU LUBBERS LOOKING THROUGH BINOCULARS 0.20 6
  • Embargoed: 13th November 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: CHAMAN, PAKISTAN
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Reuters ID: LVA86SBHWJ1VRXJT7NHMZITLE2ZA
  • Story Text: Against a backdrop of Afghans caught in no-mans-land,
    the head of the United Nations refugee agency has urged
    Pakistan to accept those fleeing U.S. air strikes against the
    ruling Taliban militia.

    Ruud Lubbers, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, also
    called on Pakistan to stop deporting Afghans who slipped
    across the porous border.

    "We hope that the officials will become a bit more
    flexible on that," Lubbers said of the authorities preventing
    thousands of Afghans from crossing into Pakistan through this
    dusty border post.

    Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister, was visiting the
    Chaman border crossing 106 km (60 miles) southeast of the
    Afghan city of Kandahar, a stronghold of the hardline Muslim
    Taliban.

    He spoke briefly to some of those who had made it across
    even as others were turned back.

    Many of the families pressed up against the barbed wire
    fences on the Afghan side come from the Kandahar area which
    has been a target of U.S. air raids.

    Pakistan has prevented all but the sick, elderly or widows
    from entering but some 50,000 Afghans are thought to have
    slipped across illegally.

    Pakistan says it already has three million Afghan refugees
    and cannot accept any more.

    It has handed several thousand Afghans to the Taliban who
    have housed them in a camp near the border fence.

    U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is in Pakistan with
    several contingency plans but no precise blueprint on how to
    build a broad-based government in Afghanistan to replace the
    ruling purist Taliban.

    He has been openly skeptical about proposals for a U.N.

    peacekeeping force to move in after the Taliban are defeated
    or to take over the governing of the unruly country while a
    new Afghan administration develops.

    Brahimi and his fellow negotiator, Frances Vendrell, plan
    to visit all of Afghanistan's neighbors, particularly
    Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.


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