KABUL, Feb. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Authorities in Afghanistan have temporarily suspended an ambitious disarmament program in the western Herat province after they found a group of people were involved in fraud and forgery, a UN spokesman said Sunday.

    "Demobilization and reintegration have been suspended in Heartuntil at least the beginning of March as the Afghanistan New Beginning Program (ANBP) in Herat has discovered a major fraud involving 300 individuals," Manoel de Almeida e Silva of UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) told journalists here.

    These individuals, he added, had forged documents obtained by paying bribes of about 100 US dollars apiece to unknown individuals within the Afghan Militia Force (AMF).

    The AMF pertains to irregular armed combatants, numbering some 60,000 and still loyal to different warlords and regional leaders.Under a UN-backed disarmament program known as Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR), the post-war Afghanistan is going to get rid of these foot soldiers while so far over 42,000 have been disarmed.

    It is the first time that such deception scheme has been confirmed since the launching of the nationwide ambitious disarmament program in October 2003.

    Preliminary investigation indicates that those involved in the forgery within the AMF were aware of the soldiers who were not going to enter the demobilization and reintegration phases.

    "With that information these individuals were able to replace those names of properly disarmed soldiers with the names of other people," Silva stressed.

    The Ministry of Defense and officials of ANBP are investigatingthe case, he said. Enditem