By HAROON RASHID
Associated Press Writer

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan is shipping some illegal Afghan refugees back across the border to tent villages being set up with U.N. help just inside Afghanistan, the Pakistani government said Tuesday.

Shafi Kakar, a government official in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan, said an agreement was reached Monday with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to accept the refugees' return. Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan confirmed the arrangement.

"The Taliban will keep refugees away from the borders, and they have agreed to set up two refugee camps inside Afghanistan," Kakar said. Khan said the agreement represents "some understanding with the Taliban local authorities."

The United Nations will provide food and supplies for the camps, one of which will be built in Spinboldak, about 15 miles from the border, Kakar said. A second will be set up nearly two miles from the border.

Fatoumata Kaba, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said the United Nations had provided 100 tents to the Taliban to build temporary refugee camps. She said the UNHCR would provide food and sanitation facilities so that women and children "can get some relief from the miseries."

Pakistan allowed more than 5,000 Afghans to enter in recent days but has again ordered its crossings sealed. Up to 15,000 Afghans are reported camped out in a no-man's land near the Chaman border crossing outside Quetta, jostling to enter Pakistan. Most have fled the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters city and site of particularly hard-hitting U.S. strikes.

UNHCR officials in Geneva said they had also prepared a "temporary staging site" just inside Pakistan for about 1,000 refugees _ the neediest of those who make it across.

One of those at that site Tuesday was 9-year-old Zabih Ullah, who had a nine-month-old baby in his hands. He said his mother was across the border in Afghanistan, barred by border guards from entering.

"I am taking care of my brother. But of course I can't feed him. I will go back to join my mother," Zabih said. Shortly afterward, he did just that.

Although estimates vary wildly, thousands of refugees have been streaming toward Pakistan's border with Afghanistan since U.S. air strikes began Oct. 7.

Though the agreement was reached Monday, Pakistan has apparently been repatriating refugees by the hundreds since the weekend. According to witnesses and officials, refugees are being plucked from the streets as they make their way toward Quetta, the nearest city, and are being returned to the border.

"The process is still going on," Kakar said. He said 23 vehicles containing illegal refugees were seized on Sunday night alone.

Afghan refugees who are holding valid documents for entry into Pakistan will be permitted to stay, Pakistani officials said. But Khan said people with such documents were "very few."

He said his government was accepting injured and elderly refugees and unaccompanied women and children. "The emphasis is those people really in dire need," Khan said.

Kaba appealed to Pakistan to open the border. "They have escaped a violent death. Now they are awaiting a slow death at the border," she said Tuesday.

Pakistan has encouraged international aid agencies to focus on helping refugees within Afghanistan.

"Our point of view has always been that we must establish camps across the border in Afghanistan and all assistance to the refugees must be given there, so that people go back to Afghanistan instead of making them comfortable here in Pakistan," President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday on CNN's "Larry King Live."

"Pakistan is prepared to accept people who are old, injured, children, some women," he said. "But we cannot open the floodgates for sall refugees flowing into Pakistan."

Sabira Khatoon, 58, crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday with her brother. But her two teen-age daughters remained in Afghanistan.

"I am worried about them," she said. "If they are not allowed to join me here, I am going back."