U.N. seeks to return Afghan refugees

GENEVA, Switzerland, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers has met with high-ranking Pakistani officials on the possibility of returning refugees to Afghanistan.

His meeting Tuesday marked the start of a visit to the region seeking to solve the problem of an estimated 3 million Afghans still living in exile in Pakistan and Iran, said a spokeswoman at the U.N. refugee agency's headquarters in Geneva.

During the meeting, Pakistan and UNHCR formally agreed to conduct a census next month of all Afghans who arrived in the country in the past 25 years, recording gender, ethnicity, address and source of livelihood, as well as whether they intend to return to their war-ravaged homeland in the next year, she said.

The information was to assist the Pakistani government and UNHCR in developing policies for those Afghans who do not return home before the end of the agency's voluntary assisted repatriation program in March 2006, spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said.

Wednesday, Lubbers travels to Afghanistan, where he was scheduled to meet with President Hamid Karzai and several ministers in the newly appointed Afghan cabinet.