Ghana has rejected a proposal from the German state of Hamburg, which requested the West African country to allow the repatriation of illegal African immigrants to Ghana.

According to reports, the city state offered to pay ?8 000 (about R72 000) to the government of Ghana for each immigrant it would take, regardless of their nationality.

A top Foreign Ministry official on Wednesday said Ghana would never sign such a deal to accept illegal African immigrants from any part of Europe on its soil.

"If the German state, with all its wealth, cannot take care of a few illegal immigrants, how can Ghana, with its meagre resources, cater for them?" the official asked.

The Ghanaian government had made it clear that only its citizens who were deported would be taken in - an argument which some considered as weak, because a large number of illegal immigrants in Germany claim to be Ghanaians even though they are unable to speak any Ghanaian language.

The proposal to send illegal African immigrants back to the continent is the brainchild of Ronald Schill, a former judge who was swept into office last year on a wave of fear and anti-immigrant sentiment set off by the discovery that several of the September 11 2001 terrorists lived in Hamburg.

His newly found Law and Order Party won more than 20 percent of the vote in an election a few weeks after the attacks in the US. Schill, dubbed "Judge Merciless" because of his stiff sentencing policies when he sat on the bench, is responsible for justice and the police.

The plan is designed to tackle the problem of immigrants who enter Europe without documentation, hide their country of origin and so make deportation impossible.

"If other African countries respond in the same way as Ghana has done, the Germans might have to think of a new strategy to dispose of illegal immigrants," the report said.