Bid to return South African asylum seekers

KUN0031 4 GEN 0187 KUWAIT /KUNA-BCQ0 SEC-ASYLUM-BRITISH Bid to return South African asylum seekers LONDON, Feb 26 (KUNA) -- Top-level talks with South Africa as well as Tanzania to take failed asylum seekers from Britain are under way, the British Home Office confirmed Thursday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair disclosed yesterday that the UK Government was in discussions with Tanzania about allowing UK officials to process asylum claims from refugees in that country before they headed for Britain. However, the Prime Minister's latest initiative to curb the flow of asylum seekers to Britain was mired in confusion after the East African country's government said it had rejected a deal to take failed Somali claimants expelled from the UK. The Tanzanian deputy home affairs minister John Chiligati has said that Tanzania had already turned down one request from Britain to take failed asylum claimants from other African countries. It followed a report that the UK Government offered the Tanzanians a four million pounds aid package if they would accept asylum seekers who had come to Britain from neighbouring Somali. - A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed today that it was also negotiating the return of South Africans who may have falsely claimed they were Zimbabweans. She said We have spoken to South Africa and only had very preliminary discussions about co-operating on returning South Africans who may have falsely claimed asylum in Britain". Blair is likely to face questions about the latest disclosures when he holds his monthly Prime Ministerial press conference in Downing Street later today, commentators said. In an interview with the BBC World Service's "World Today" programme Chiligati confirmed that a team of officials from the UK Home Office visited Tanzania last year. They put up that proposal that they want a number of refugees to be sent to Tanzania, and from here they can be sorted out and repatriated to their own countries. But that proposal was not accepted by our government because already we have enough of a refugee problem,'' he said. We have already given our categorically negative response because we have probably the biggest number of refugees in the world. We have 700,000 refugees from different countries, and that is enough. We cannot take more from Britain". - We were negotiating, yes. But we have already given them our answer, a negative answer. Maybe his (Blair's) officials have not reported back to the Government", he added. The Home Office said the discussions with the Tanzanians were in an early stage''. The Home Office spokeswoman refused to be drawn on the earlier talks about sending failed Somali asylum seekers to Tanzania. However she said that officials were discussing proposals with the government in Dar es Salaam to repatriate Tanzanians who had come to Britain claiming to be Somalis. (end) he.mm KUNA 261301 Feb 04NNNN