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Tehran says it will expel `illegal' Afghan refugees

"Afghanistan's problems are known to everyone ... In the current situation we're overpowered to receive 1.5 million refugees at home."

Abdul Qadir Ahadi, Afghan deputy refugees minister

Tehran said it intends to expel all 1.5 million Afghans who are within its borders illegally, a visiting Iranian official said in Kabul on Monday, even as Afghan authorities said they could not cope with such a high number of returnees.

"Those who illegally entered Iran have committed crimes: entering illegally, staying illegally and working illegally -- these are crimes," Sayed Taghi Ghaemi, from the Iranian interior ministry, told reporters.

"We will expel them from our country at the first opportunity we encounter them," he said on the sidelines of a meeting between both governments to assess the repatriation of Afghans from Iran.

Iran estimates there are about 1.5 million Afghans illegally within its borders, with another 900,000 there as registered refugees. It began to force the illegals out nearly a year ago.

Ghaemi said the removals would be conducted in consultation with the Afghan government.

Kabul has however been urging Tehran to halt the expulsions, especially over the winter which has been one of the coldest in decades with about 1,000 people dying from the cold.

Deputy refugees minister Abdul Qadir Ahadi told the same news briefing that Kabul was not able to receive returnees in large numbers.

"Afghanistan's problems are known to everyone," he said. "In the current situation we're overpowered to receive 1.5 million refugees at home," he said.

In a recent mass expulsion, officials in the western province of Nimroz said about 1,800 Afghans had arrived on Saturday.

Conflict, poverty and drought led to an exodus of Afghans that began in the 1970s and ended with about 8 million in exile in the 1990s. Most went to Iran and Pakistan.

Since 2002, after the fall of the Taliban, about 4 million have returned. There are still 2 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
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