Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has rejected the impression of building refugee camps or resettlement processing facilities on Pakistani soil for the people coming from Afghanistan.

In an interview with a foreign journal, he said instead, Pakistan would continue to facilitate the departure of those with valid documents who wished to exit Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The Foreign Minister said Pakistan has been hosting over three million Afghan refugees for so many decades without any international help or assistance and now we do not have the capacity to absorb more.

He said that any processing facility where Afghan citizens can apply for asylum should be in Afghanistan.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the UK should “accept the new reality” in Afghanistan and deliver immediate aid to the Taliban-run country as isolating the Taliban authorities would lead to economic collapse, “anarchy”, and “chaos”.