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Iran expels 85,000 Afghans in three weeks

TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran has expelled 85,000 illegal Afghan refugees in the past three weeks in a repatriation plan whose speed triggered the sacking of two Afghan cabinet ministers, officials said.

"Around 85,000 illegal Afghan citizens have been expelled from Iran" since Tehran started the plan on April 21, Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr said, according to the IRNA agency.

Afghans without proper working papers are estimated to form half of the two million Afghans, mostly Shiite Hazara or Sunni Persian-speaking Tajiks, who fled conflict at home and still live in the Islamic republic.

Iran wants all its Afghan refugees to return home in the coming years and Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi has said Tehran wants one million Afghans to be repatriated by next March.

Zolghadr said the "foreign citizens plan" was not targeting those Afghans who were legally registered and even those expelled had the right to return if they picked up the right papers at Iranian consulates in Afghanistan.

"Iran is ready to furnish employment for those who have been expelled if they enter the country legally," he said.

But Iran’s swiftness in executing the plan has sparked anger in Kabul, prompting parliament to sack both Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta and Refugees Affairs Minister Akbar Akbar.

Spanta was accused of not doing enough to persuade Iran to ease its policy of forced repatriation, while Akbar allegedly failed to help accommodate thousands of refugees forced out by Iran.

Afghanistan publicly asked Iran not to expel the refugees, saying that its own capacity to house them is very limited and this would "create problems."

But Iran has frequently expressed exasperation that it must shoulder the burden of housing those displaced and wants all Afghans in Iran without an Iranian passport to return home by 2010.