Former UNHCR head arrives in Pakistan

Sadako Ogata, a former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is due to arrive in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Monday on her way to Afghanistan and Iran as Japan's special envoy for Afghan affairs, a Japanese embassy official has told IRIN. The official, Hajime Kido, said Ogata would travel to Kabul on Wednesday from Islamabad on a chartered UN flight and spend four days in Afghanistan. She will be consulting with the new Afghan interim administration and other officials ahead of a ministerial-level conference on Afghan reconstruction to be held in Tokyo from 21 to 22 January. She will also visit the western Afghan city of Herat from 11 January and drive to the Iranian city of Mashhad on 13 January through the historic Eslam Qaleh border crossing. Ogata is highly experienced in refugee support issues, having spent a decade - from 1991 to 2000 - serving as head of the UN refugee agency. She drove on the same historic route between Herat and Mashhad in September 2000 when she visited Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran to learn about the plight of Afghan refugees and to highlight their woes to donors. Ogata is due to meet with Afghanistan's new leader, Hamid Karzai, and is also expected to meet Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, among other government officials. Karzai's six-month administration was set up on 22 December as a first step towards the formation of a broad-based multiethnic government to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan. Through the visit by Ogata, who is expected to serve as Japanese chairwoman at the Tokyo conference, Japan intends to ascertain the intentions and requests of Afghanistan's interim government and of local people following the return of refugees to Afghanistan, Japanese officials in Tokyo are quoted as saying. The Tokyo conference will be chaired jointly by Japan, the European Union, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Participants will include prospective donors towards Afghanistan's rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction.