NAIROBI, Kenya — After enduring months of grenade and other explosive-device attacks, Kenya announced new, more stringent controls aimed primarily at Somali refugees inside its borders.

A Kenya member of Parliament criticized the measures, saying they are akin to opening concentration camps, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday that it is in consultations to preserve refugees’ rights.

The U.N. agency and government representatives met Friday over the government’s new policy, said Emmanuel Nyabera, an agency spokesman.

The two sides will meet again Monday, he said.

A government statement from the Department of Refugee Affairs said Kenya hosts refugees from nine countries. But given the security environment in Kenya, it’s clear that the government is most concerned about the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia.

Because of that “unbearable and uncontrollable threat to national security,” the statement said, the government decided that all refugees and asylum seekers from Somalia must return to the large refugee camp complex known as Dadaab, a seemingly endless expanse of refugee housing on the sands of Kenya close to the Somali border.

More than 400,000 refugees live in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/15/2012