AMMAN/BAGHDAD — The Jordanian government yesterday told the visiting UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Antonio Guterres, that Iraqi refugees in the country cost the treasury 1.6 billion dinars ($2.26 billion) over the past three years, and appealed for help from the world community.

Guterres met with Interior Minister Eid Al-Fayez, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Suhair Al-Ali and three other Cabinet members to evaluate the conditions of more than 500,000 Iraqis who fled to Jordan after the 2003 US-led invasion of their country. Suhair briefed the UNCHR on the “huge economic burdens incurred by Jordan as a result of hosting a large number of Iraqis,” an official statement said.

She estimated the drain on infrastructure and public utilities by Iraqis in the last three years at more than 1.6 billion dinars and pressed Guterres to “urge the world community to come to Jordan’s assistance,” it added.

Minister of Education Taysir Nuaimi put the number of Iraqi students at Jordanian public schools at more than 24,000. “Iraqi students can be admitted at public schools regardless of obtaining residence permits,” he said.

Guterres promised to follow up the issue with donor countries with a view to ensuring aid to Jordan to enable it to carry on with hosting Iraqi refugees, the statement said.

According to the UN, four million Iraqis are struggling to feed themselves and 40 percent of the country’s 27 million people have no safe water, despite oil wealth and a booming economy, the UN said yesterday.

With annual economic growth of around 7 percent, according to UN estimates, and a national budget of $48 billion, buoyed by oil exports of 1.6 million barrels per day, Iraq has the ingredients to be prosperous. But insurgency and sectarian attacks have displaced more than two million people and left nearly twice as many hungry.

“Four million Iraqis cannot guarantee they’re going to have food on their table tomorrow,” the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, David Shearer, told Reuters at the launch of a $265 million appeal to donor governments for 2008.

Violence is down 60 percent across Iraq since last June, thanks to a surge of 30,000 extra US troops, a decision by Sunni tribal leaders to turn against Al-Qaeda and a cease-fire by Moqtada Sadr’s Shiite Mehdi Army.

—With input from agencies