By KIRSTEN LAWSON

Prime Minister John Howard offered Afghan asylum-seekers a cash incentive to return home yesterday in a move that could cost taxpayers more than $10 million.

Just under 4600 Afghans in the community, in detention centres and on Nauru would qualify, a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said.

Mr Howard, in New York after meeting Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, did not say how much he would give the Afghans, but he compared the offer with that made to the Kosovars two years ago.

Kosovar adults were given $3000 and children $500.

Mr Howard said Mr Karzai had not finally agreed to the offer but would send a delegation to Australia within a couple of weeks to discuss it and meet detainees.

The offer was welcomed by Afghan community leaders, but the acting head of the Government's immigration advisory group, Ray Funnell, questioned whether it would encourage the bulk of the Afghans to go home.

Mr Funnell, whose group brokered Wednesday's truce at Woomera, said the Hazara Afghans still feared persecution.

''People have to appreciate this is a very complex issue but particularly with the ethnic minority which is the Hazaras,'' he said.

''There's no doubt that the Hazaras are a minority in Afghanistan that have been persecuted for centuries.

''Their contention - and it's a contention for which I believe there is some evidence - is that for Hazaras, Taliban or not, Afghanistan is not a secure and stable and, in particular, predictable place to which Hazaras can return and be safe.''

But Afghan Australia Council NSW president Wali Hakim said the Government's offer was sensible. A fair payment would be travel costs and ''a few thousand dollars''.

He said resettling in Afghanistan now the Taliban had been overthrown was a better option than living indefinitely in detention in Australia, with many having spent up to $10,000 to get here.

Labor Leader Simon Crean also welcomed the move, saying if people's circumstances had changed with the Taliban's defeat, they should go home.

There are 502 Afghans in detention in Australia and 780 on Nauru. The remaining 3290 who will qualify for the payment have already been granted temporary protection visas, which last only three years, and are living in the community.

At Woomera yesterday, lawyers warned that trouble could flare again among Iranians and Iraqis.

Rob McDonald also claimed the more than 200 hunger strikers had been ''tricked'' into abandoning their protest by detention centre staff who ''simultaneously entered various compounds where people were hunger striking and informed each of those compounds that the other was ending that hunger strike''.

They had separately agreed because they believed others had done so.

But Mr Funnell said he was ''staggered'' at the allegation, given that he had addressed a mass meeting at Woomera on Wednesday at which the strikers had decided to start eating.

''I truly am staggered,'' he said. ''There is no evidence that I know of to support that. Moreover the fact that this man [Mr McDonald] did this [made the allegation] I find incredible . . .

''The first thing I want to find out is, has this lawyer's contention poisoned the process, because he must have expressed this same opinion to them [the detainees] and we may be in the position of having to rewin their confidence.''

But lawyer Paul Boylan said Mr Funnell's group had offered little of substance and he was suspicious about whether its promises would stand up.

''Three big healthy guys that have three meals a day. They're there doing the Government's business. They're paid for by the Government. They're appointed by the Government, and they've got no power to do anything,'' he said.

''If they've made it more difficult for these people to stand it mentally because they've suggested things might happen that they've got no control over, then that would be cruel.''