TEHRAN -- Iran and Pakistan have pledged to free a number of Afghan nationals kept in their custody, it was reported Saturday.

Afghan news agency Bakhtar reported that Pakistan is to liberate soon hundreds of Afghans detained by the Pakistan police.

Reportedly the United Arab Emirates had mediated to secure the release of the Afghan detainees.

Pakistan's decision to release Afghans is in response to Afghanistan's releasing of a number of Pakistanis prisoners.

Afghan interim government on November 26 freed 87 Pakistanis made prisoners in Afghanistan by the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance but they were detained for questioning by Pakistani officials after they crossed at Torkham border.

The officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) handed over the freed prisoners to Pakistan Embassy in Kabul who were later driven in buses to Pak-Afghan border, the officials said.

This is the second group of Pakistani prisoners freed this month. A group of 15 aged Pakistani prisoners were released earlier this month, IRNA reported.

Several thousands of Pakistanis crossed into Afghanistan last year to help Taleban against the American-led attack on Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has so far released more than 400 Pakistani prisoners.

According to reports the freed men include about 47 woodcutters from the northwest frontier province who had gone to Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan some months ago to seek work with forest contractors. Afghan contractors used to hire the poor woodcutters every summer and take them to Afghanistan without visas.

However, military commanders affiliated to the Northern Alliance arrested the woodcutters, mostly belonging to Madyan in Swat and shifted them to prisons in Kabul.

The remaining prisoners include those who were caught fighting alongside the Taleban before September 11 attacks in the U.S. All the Pakistani prisoners were shifted to Kabul sometime back but their release was delayed on one pretext or the other.

Karzai also called on Iran to abide by its pledges to liberate those Afghan prisoners who have not private complainants.

Iran's envoy to Kabul Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian said the call by the Afghan government for the release of Afghan prisoners in Iran has been accepted by the Iranian Embassy in Afghanistan but action on liberating the Afghan prisoners has yet to be done in future.

There are a large number of the Afghan nationals who have been arrested and committed to prison on charges of the drug trafficking-related offenses and other crimes.

Also, according to the latest dispatches from Isfahan Province over 31,600 Afghan refugees have voluntarily returned to their homeland since April 9, when the Plan for Afghans' Voluntary Repatriation began, the provincial Bureau for Aliens' and Foreign Immigrants' Affairs (BAFIA) announced on Saturday.

According to BAFIA, the refugees were repatriated to Afghanistan within the framework of 3,205 families during the period.

Isfahan is one of the country's nine bases that are active in the repatriation of Afghan refugees.

The voluntary repatriation of Afghans is governed by a tripartite accord signed in Geneva on April 3 by Iran, Afghanistan and the UNHCR.

The program envisages the repatriation of 400,000 Afghan refugees by the end of the current Iranian year in March 2003.

Since the implementation of the plan, all legal and political grounds for the continued stay of Afghan refugees in Iran have been removed and nationals of that country who remain are no longer subject to the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees.

Afghan refugees will be required to present passports and valid visas to enter Iran as of the date of the accord and illegal entrants will be dealt with according to the laws of the land.

Under the accord, returning Afghans are to pass through the Dogharoun and Milak border checkpoints in Iran's northeastern Province of Khorasan and the southeastern Province of Sistan-Baluchestan, respectively.

Once inside Afghanistan, the returnees are given a cash grant to cover transportation cost that is calculated according to the distance traveled.

They also receive food assistance and some household items to help in restarting their lives.

The UNHCR has instituted a series of verification checks to ensure that no one receives assistance more than once.

Iran has been sheltering more than two million Afghan refugees fleeing from civil wars and severe droughts in Afghanistan over the past two decades.