BRUSSELS -- Mariam Hosseini wants to return to her home in Afghanistan -- but not as soon as the Belgian government would like.

Hosseini and more than 200 other Afghan refugees are on hunger strike in a Brussels church, saying they would rather die than go back to a country they consider too dangerous.

The government has given them a year to leave Belgium, but the 40-year-old mother of three wants more time.

"We will return when it is safe," she told Reuters, her voice weak from nearly two weeks of subsisting on water and not much else.

When she learned that her family would not be granted asylum in Belgium, Hosseini and her husband joined refugees occupying the Sainte-Croix Church and refusing food to try to force Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's government to change its mind.

Hosseini said she would rather die in the church than in the streets of Kabul, where she and her husband ran a pharmacy before fleeing the country in 2001.

"If we stay here, we die. If we return, the same thing will happen," she said, sitting on a blanket amid scores of other protesters in the nave.

Mohamed Thare Assefi fears the worst if he has to go back to a land where fighting is frequent despite peacekeepers' efforts to establish order after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. "I would not survive one night there," said the 37-year-old, who came here with his wife and three children six years ago.

Pascal Smet, who heads the state agency that processed their cases, said Brussels had always intended to review the situation in Afghanistan before the deadline for their return. "The government recognizes that the situation is difficult," he said, adding that next year's deadline might be extended. "There will not be any forced repatriation." --------------Attention of a Nation------------

The protest against the rejection of some 300 Afghans' asylum requests has grabbed national attention since it began on July 24.

Newspapers publish daily reports on their plight, while television footage shows local Belgians attending mass amid protesters lying quietly on blankets and mattresses.

Under the church's vaulted ceiling, bearded men play cards, women speak softly in small groups, and children busily draw on sheets of paper on the floor before the altar.

Most of the protesters lie alone along the walls, waiting in silence for the government's next move.

Red Cross volunteers nurse those who have fallen ill from fasting, while concerned locals bring hot meals to the children, who along with pregnant women and the elderly are not taking part in the hunger strike. "Their country is not safe," said Dominique Nalpas, who helped organize the preparation of the meals by residents of the middle-class neighborhood of Ixelles. "You can't send them back just like that."

Others have been less sympathetic. Dozens of members of the far-right, anti-immigration Nation party protested outside the brown-brick church last weekend but were stopped by police.

After failing to negotiate an end to the protest last week, the government vowed not to have its hand forced. But it has since indicated it would give the talks another chance.

Protest leaders too have softened their stance. One of them, Mohamed Nasare, said they no longer sought permanent residence, but an extended temporary stay with the right to work.

Britain has shown less patience in its struggle to manage a tide of asylum seekers. Last month, it sent more than 40 Afghans back to their country despite an outcry from human rights groups who do not yet see Afghanistan as a safe place.

Habibullah, a 27-year-old former lumberman from the region of Konar who is also on hunger strike, said it would take more than a year for peace to take root in his country. "After 20 years of war, you can't stop it in two years," he said. "There is still too much instability."