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The
United Nations refugee agency today appealed for
other countries to grant resettlement to some 900
mostly Iranian Kurd or Palestinian refugees who have
been marooned for the past 18 months in
no-man's-land between Iraq and Jordan or in a nearby
camp and now face another winter of freezing
temperatures in tents.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted
that 185 Iranian Kurd refugees arrived in Sweden on
Thursday to join another 202 Iranian Kurds who
landed in Stockholm two weeks ago after months of
agency efforts to secure their permanent
resettlement after they fled the war in Iraq in the
spring of 2003.
"However, the refugee agency wants to draw attention
to the plight of some 900 hundred refugees who
remain near the Jordanian border – 760 of them still
in the no-man's-land, another 130 in Ruweished camp
inside Jordan," UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis
told a news briefing in Geneva.
"In both locations, refugees have been living under
very harsh conditions since the spring of 2003,
staying under tents in a desert area subject to
extreme climatic variations. They now face a second
winter of freezing temperatures with no immediate
solution in sight," she added.
Most of the refugees had previously been in exile in
Iraq but fled to escape the fighting and unrest last
year. Since then, UNHCR has submitted 880 cases for
resettlement to such nations as the United States,
Australia and the Scandinavian countries but some
500 of these requests are still pending, Ms. Pagonis
said.
The agency also asked many Arab countries to grant
shelter, even on a temporary basis, to the
Palestinians stuck at the Jordanian border. Last
year, Jordan itself granted temporary asylum to 386
Palestinians with Jordanian spouses while 250
Palestinians chose to leave Ruweished to go back to
Iraq.
"The refugee agency has undertaken to assist
countries with the financial cost of hosting
Palestinian refugees and we hope for a positive
reaction from Arab states," Ms. Pagonis said.
http://www.unhcr.org/
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