LUANDA (AFP) -- Angola has appealed for international funds to help return home more than 200,000 refugees displaced by the southern African country's 27-year civil war which ended in 2002.

The government only has eight million dollars for the program and "needs additional funds to bring back and reinstall Angolans in the areas they hail from, before the end of this year," Social Welfare Ministers Joao Baptista Kussumua told international donors late Tuesday.

Some 600,000 Angolans sought refuge in South Africa, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia during the war, according to government figures.

The U.S. ambassador to Angola, Cynthia Efird, told the minister that Washington would be ready to donate 4.4 million dollars to resettle the refugees.

Oil-rich Angola emerged from a brutal civil war in 2002 after the ruling Movement for the Liberation of Angola, in power since independence from Portugal in 1975, signed a peace pact with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, a former rebel movement.

An estimated 500,000 people were killed in the war which caused some 40 billion dollars in economic damage, according to Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

At least 370,000 Angolans have been repatriated since the end of the war in programs supported by aid organizations and the United Nations.