Now that the Taliban are no longer there, the public reason that most of them have given for leaving Afghanistan is no longer there. -- John Howard, Australian prime minister

---

Friday, February 1, 2002

[image added by this website]

 

Australia will pay Afghans to go home

By BARBIE DUTTER
in SYDNEY

THE Australian government announced plans yesterday to pay thousands of Afghan asylum seekers and recognised refugees to return to their homeland.

The proposed resettlement allowances, the amount of which has yet to be determined, follow a two-week hunger strike and self-mutilation by detainees at the Woomera detention camp ia South Australia.

John Howard, the prime minister, said Australia would provide funds to help resettle the estimated 1,100 Afghans held in immigration detention centres or in camps set up ia the nearby Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

"Now that the Taliban are no longer there, the public reason that most of them have given for leaving Afghanistan is no longer there," he said.

"I don't think it is unreasonable of us to expect them to go back to Afghanistan, but given Afghanistan's circumstances I don't think it's unreasonable or unfair or overdoing it to offer some resettlement assistance."

Philip Ruddock, the immigration minister (right), said the number who could qualify for the repatriation allowance was around 4,000 when those who hnd already been granted temporary refugee status were taken into account.

"To assume that all of them would want to take advantage of an opportunity of that sort would be perhaps naive, but it would be of that order," he said.

Under a similar scheme in 1999, Kosovo Albanian refugees were offered £1,100 per adult and £185 for each child.

The initiative was announced after Mr Howard met the interim leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, in New York.