Kabul to help with migrants
Afghanistan?s Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it will open an embassy in Athens within a few months to assist with the repatriation of thousands of undocumented Afghan migrants.
The chief purpose of the embassy will be to provide illegal Afghans with travel documents so they can return home. A minority are granted the political asylum they seek.
A spokesman at the ministry in Kabul was quoted as saying the embassy would be operational by the end of March. The spokesman said around 50,000 Afghans enter Greece illegally every year, many hoping to travel on to Western Europe.
Hundreds of Afghans, along with migrants of other ethnicities, use a makeshift camp in the western port of Patra as a starting point to sneak onto ferries bound for Italy. Some have died of suffocation in trucks boarding these vessels.
