By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, March 20 (Reuters) - Suicide bombers and Taliban fighters are crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and Pakistan must take more action to stop the incursions, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Reporting to the Security Council on Afghanistan, Ban said many attacks appeared to be financed abroad and insurgents in the country were emboldened by strategic successes despite the deaths of some fighters.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan during the past year to its most intense since U.S.-led forced ousted the Taliban in 2001. Afghanistan and its allies say the Taliban's strength is partly a result of safe havens in Pakistan.

"Suicide bombings represent the most visible link between the insurgency and international terrorism," Ban's report said. "Many attacks appear to have been financed from abroad. According to national and international security sources, the training camps for these attacks are located outside Afghanistan."

Tom Koenigs, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, said there had already been 27 suicide attacks this year with 80 percent of the victims civilians, while Ban's report showed at least four suicide bombers in January were not Afghans.

Ban said coordinated efforts by Afghanistan and Pakistan would be vital to curbing incursions into Afghanistan, adding some steps taken by Pakistan were "encouraging, but further resolute action is still needed."

Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram said the onus was not only on Islamabad to control its border with Afghanistan and that "the crossing of the border is in both directions."

"Most of the Taliban activity is within Afghanistan as are their five command structures. This should not be distorted," Akram told the Security Council. "As for financing the Taliban from abroad, the major source of financing for the Taliban lies within Afghanistan -- that is the production of drugs."

"ATROCIOUS ALLEGATIONS"

But Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council that Pakistan and Iran needed to boost border controls to help stop the flow of drugs, chemicals used in drug production and money.

"At the moment the Afghan government is in no position to control its territory, let alone its borders," he said. Afghanistan produces the most opium poppy in the world, which is used to make more than 90 percent of the world's heroin.

But Akram said Pakistan would act shortly to eliminate what he described as "atrocious allegations" that the country was a safe haven for the Taliban and terrorist training camps by closing four border refugee camps.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has said the camps -- most set up when Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979 -- were a haven for the Taliban. Akram appealed for international support to re-establish the camps in Afghanistan.

Akram said a total of 3 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan would be repatriated during the next few years.

"We have hosted them for 30 years without any appreciable international assistance. This has placed an unconscionable burden on our nation's exchequer, our economy, our environment and our society," Akram said.

"We hope conditions will be created in Afghanistan for the return of these refugees in dignity and security," he said.

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