Agencies

Up to 5,000 Afghan refugees a day are crossing into neighbouring Iran, compounding the already heavy burden it faces hosting an estimated 3.6 million Afghans, a relief group said yesterday.

The Norwegian Refugee Council called for more international support for Iran, which despite facing tough US economic sanctions, operates what the council described as one of the most inclusive refugee policies in the world.

“Iran cannot be expected to host so many Afghans with so little support from the international community,” the council’s secretary general Jan Egeland said after a visit to Iran this week.

“There must be an immediate scale up of aid both inside Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries like Iran, before the deadly winter cold.”

The new US special envoy for Afghanistan will visit Pakistan this week for a meeting with the Taliban foreign minister and senior diplomats from China and Russia, a Pakistani official and the US State Department said.

Meanwhile, Diplomats and security analysts from Afghanistan’s neighbours, with the notable exceptions of China and Pakistan, gathered in New Delhi yesterday to discuss how to engage with the country’s Taliban rulers. Convened less than three months after the withdrawal of the last US and Western forces from Kabul, the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue for Afghanistan was attended by representatives from India, Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, reports Reuters.

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