By Charlotte Greenfield
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Western embassies and the United Nations are urging&nbsp;Pakistan&nbsp;to incorporate into its plan to deport hundreds of&nbsp;thousands&nbsp;of undocumented migrants a way to&nbsp;identify&nbsp;and&nbsp;protect&nbsp;Afghans&nbsp;who face the&nbsp;risk&nbsp;of persecution at home, officials told Reuters.
Pakistan&nbsp;has set Nov.1 for the start of the expulsions, which could leave more than 1.7 million&nbsp;Afghans&nbsp;vulnerable in the South Asian nation, of a total of more than 4 million migrants and refugees from its neighbour.
"We are asking the government to come up with a comprehensive system and ... mechanism to manage and register people at immediate&nbsp;risk&nbsp;of persecution if forced to return," Qaiser Khan Afridi, the spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in&nbsp;Pakistan, told Reuters.
"Because they cannot return, they can't go back to Afghanistan because their freedom or their life might be at&nbsp;risk."
Spokespersons for&nbsp;Pakistan's interior and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was not immediately clear if&nbsp;Pakistan&nbsp;had agreed to take up the proposals by the United Nations and other embassies.
Afridi added that if&nbsp;Pakistan&nbsp;approved, his agency, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), had offered to provide it the technical assistance and financial support needed for the effort.
Two official&nbsp;sources&nbsp;said several embassies of NATO members in Islamabad were lobbying&nbsp;Pakistan's government at the highest levels, along with UNHCR, seeking exemption from deportation for&nbsp;thousands&nbsp;of&nbsp;Afghans&nbsp;being resettled to Western countries.
"To help&nbsp;protect&nbsp;vulnerable individuals, we have shared a list with the government of more than 25,000 Afghan individuals in the U.S. resettlement and relocation pipelines," a senior U.S. official told Reuters.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is sensitive, added that U.S. authorities were working to issue letters to such individuals&nbsp;identifying them as being part of the resettlement efforts.
The official&nbsp;sources, who sought anonymity, said they continued to call for the setting-up of a "protective screening mechanism" for those being deported.
That would probably involve an interview to evaluate a potential deportee's claims about fear of persecution and decide the need for additional&nbsp;protection, in line with international humanitarian law, officials familiar with the proposals said.
About 600,000&nbsp;Afghans&nbsp;have crossed into&nbsp;Pakistan&nbsp;since the Taliban took over in 2021, in addition to a large number present since the Soviet invasion of 1979.
This month,&nbsp;Pakistan&nbsp;said it would deport all foreigners without proper documents after Wednesday, and about 60,000&nbsp;Afghans&nbsp;returned home in October, with more expected to do so.
Pakistan&nbsp;says Afghan nationals have been found to be involved in crimes and militancy, and are a drain on its resources.
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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Pakistan urged to identify, protect thousands of at-risk Afghans -sources