Eritrean refugees leave Sudan for home

Khartoum- Sudan (PANA) -- About a thousand Eritrean refugees escorted by an official of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Ruud Lubbers, crossed the Sudanese frontier in a UN- sponsored voluntary return home, State television confirmed here Friday.
"There is still a substantial number of [Eritrean] refugees in Sudan," Lubbers said, expressing satisfaction with the way the return had been conducted.
By the middle of the 1980s half a million Eritreans were living in Sudan, most of them having fled their homeland in the 1960s after Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie annexed Eritrea in 1962.
Since July 2000, about 104,000 have gone home.
Even so about 100,000 want to keep their refugee status, according to the UNHCR.