Jordan to Host Conference on Iraqi Refugees

Iraqi refugees wait to register their names at the UN Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) center in the Douma suburb of Damascus on Thursday. (Reuters)

by Abdul Jalil Mustafa
AMMAN/BAGHDAD, 20 July 2007 — Jordan has invited officials from Iraq, Syria, and Egypt to a conference next week on ways to help these states cope with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday. United Nations officials will attend, with Turkey, Iran, Russia and Japan also taking part in the July 26 meeting as “observers,” the ministry said in a statement carried by state-run Petra news agency.

“The conference will discuss ways of helping these states cope with burdens caused by Iraqi refugees,” it said. On July 12, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said it had more than doubled its annual appeal for funding to help millions of uprooted Iraqis to $123 million, to boost medical care, shelter and other support.

It urged the international community to “put its money where its mouth is” after Syria and Jordan were left with little in the way of direct bilateral aid to cope with some two million Iraqi refugees fleeing widespread violence. The UNHCR has warned that Syria and Jordan’s health care, education systems and housing are under severe strain due to the continued influx of Iraqis.

Jordan said in May that hosting Iraqi refugees is costing the desert kingdom around one billion dollars a year, and it has commissioned a survey to determine the exact number of Iraqis on its territory. Syria hosts some 1.4 million Iraqis and Jordan about 750,000, including people who had fled before the 2003 US-led invasion.

UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner L. Craig Johnstone commended both Jordan and Syria for taking in so many refugees, during a visit to both countries to meet officials and check on humanitarian services provided to Iraqis, the UN agency said in a statement.

“Registration is the only way that we can effectively identify those refugees that need our help,” Johnstone said, adding that the UNHCR has already registered more than 150,000 Iraqis in the region.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, Iraq’s main Sunni Arab bloc has ended its boycott of the Shiite-dominated Parliament, officials said yesterday, in a positive sign for the country’s faltering attempts at national reconciliation.

The return of the Accordance Front comes at a time when Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki is under growing pressure from Washington to push through laws aimed at quelling violence and reconciling majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs. In the latest in a series of abuse allegations against American forces in Iraq, the US military said yesterday two soldiers had been charged with murdering an Iraqi last month near the northern city of Kirkuk.

The Accordance Front began its boycott in June in protest against the ousting of one of its senior members, Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, as Parliament speaker. It said he would be reinstated. “Mashhadani is back, we are back,” said Saleem Al-Jubouri, a spokesman and lawmaker for the bloc.

“We also felt we have some very important legislation that needs to be dealt with.” Mashhadani later presided over a meeting of Parliament where the main political blocs said they welcomed the Front’s return as a positive step.

A separate ban on attending Maliki’s Cabinet meetings remains in place, however. The Front quit the cabinet last month in anger over legal action against one of its ministers. Washington has been urging Iraq for months to pass important laws aimed at drawing Sunni Arabs more firmly into the political process. Only one of the drafts has reached parliament.

Such laws would have little meaning for reconciliation if they were debated and passed without the 44 members of the Accordance Front in the 275-seat parliament. A bloc of 30 parliamentarians loyal to fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr also ended a boycott of Parliament earlier this week after winning assurances from the government that sacred shrines would be better protected.