UNITED NATIONS, April 20 (UPI) -- The U.N. refugee agency announced Tuesday it is closing refugee camps in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, citing security concerns.
Chief spokesman Fred Eckhard at U.N. World headquarters in New York announced the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers said in Islamabad, Pakistan, the closing will affect 13 camps by September.
Eckhard said UNHCR would encourage the 200,000 Afghan residents of the camps to return home.
"We have to be more assertive, more clear on the need to end, close down certain camps," Lubbers said in the Pakistani capital where he has recently completed a nine-day tour of Iran and Afghanistan.
The 13 affected sites are the so-called "new" camps set up near the border inside Pakistan to receive people fleeing the war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.
Lubbers said there was a danger forces opposed to the current government in Afghanistan, both from the ousted Taliban regime and the Al-Qaida terror organization, might find sanctuary and recruit people from the border camps.
"It's not good for the people who are living there," he said.
