Governement asks UNHCR for refugee relocation plan

Guinea's government has asked the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to come up with a plan by Wednesday to transfer at least 10,000 refugees living in the cities of Guekedou and Nzerekore to refugee camps, Chris Ache, UNHCR's resident representative in Guinea, told IRIN. He said transferring the refugees in the short term was not possible. "We need space for it. We need resources and food for them," said Ache. He said he did not believe the refugees were under any immediate threat but that could change if armed men crossed into Guinea from Liberia or Sierra Leone as they have in the past and raided Guinean villages. "My greatest concern now is that there should not be any more attacks," he said. "More attacks may revive the phobia and there could be more attacks against the refugees." At estimated 5,000 Liberians and Sierra Leoneans were detained at the weekend in Conakry following three cross-border incursions in a week, including an attack on a Guinean garrison. Authorities in Guinea on Tuesday released some detainees they had identified as legal residents and sent word to Nzerekore and Guekedou, two border towns, to refrain from arresting refugees. Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) expressed its "strong condemnation" of the attacks in Guinea, which left at least 80 people dead, according to Guinean authorities. ECOWAS Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, the president of Mali, arrived in Conakry on Tuesday to help mediate, a humanitarian source told IRIN. [See separate items titled 'GUINEA: Authorities release some Liberians and Sierra Leoneans' and 'GUINEA: Diplomacy aimed at ending border violence']