RIYADH, 29 July 2003 — The UN refugee agency said yesterday it would repatriate 244 Iraqi refugees in northern Saudi Arabia this week because they were desperate go home but encouraged other refugees to wait for Iraq to stabilize.
The Iraqis, mostly Shiites, are among 5,200 refugees who fled their country after a failed uprising against Saddam in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and have been stranded in a desert camp for the past 12 years.
Spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Mamoon Muhsen said the United Nations would help about 3,686 refugees to go home, but was discouraging others from doing the same now because of instability in Iraq.
“We don’t encourage refugees to go back to Iraq but we are trying to facilitate the return of whoever wants to go back immediately. We can’t prevent them from returning,” Muhsen said.
He said the rest of the 5,200 refugees in the Kingdom were monitoring the developments in Iraq and waiting for the country to settle down.
The UNHCR hopes to launch a program at the start of 2004 to help half a million Iraqis — including those in Saudi Arabia — to return home, Muhsen said. The group of 244 Iraqis will head by land to the Iraqi southern city of Basra via Kuwait.
Some Iraqis have already left Lebanon and Syria but most are waiting until the agency can organize their return.
Muhsen had said earlier that the group formed part of the remaining 2,818 Iraqi refugees at Rafha camp. “The process of registration and coordination with the concerned parties including the United States, Britain and Kuwait sides have been completed and now the refugees are waiting to leave for Iraq any moment.”
The refugees are from among the 93,000 Iraqi prisoners of war brought into the Kingdom by the coalition forces following the 1991 Gulf War. Some 60,000 returned to Iraq at the time in an exchange of POWs accord which included soldiers and non-commissioned officers.
