No threat of refugee influx, says UNHCR

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has confirmed that there is no danger of an influx of refugees crossing into Iran from Iraq following last week's reports of population movements in the eastern Iraqi town of Badrah. "We found that most people were returning, and there was no danger of refugees entering Iran," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN from the Iranian capital, Tehran. "Whereas on the weekend there had been reports of 30,000 people there, while others reported 100,000, we found 2,500 to 3,000 people," he said. Redden's comments follow a UN assessment mission to the area on Monday afternoon to investigate reports last week that thousands of displaced Iraqis had gathered in the Iraqi town near the border with Iran. On 10 April, UNHCR reported that the Iraqis had fled the cities of Baghdad and Nasiriyah earlier, and simply wanted to stay with relatives and friends in the area. Others had already been in Badrah for more than three weeks, while some had even started returning to the capital after it came under coalition control, the report added. Following the assessment, Redden concluded there was no looming humanitarian disaster. "We found that most of the IDPs [internally displaced persons] were planning to return to their homes. While there are hardships, there is nothing resembling a disaster situation. It was not as serious as earlier reports indicated," he said. Although there were clearly a large number of people in this town, which would normally have around 6,000 residents, no one had sought asylum and none of those remaining was interested in asylum, he observed. Redden did note, however, that there was a small group of about 200 people at the border seeking to meet relatives on the other side, many of whom they had not seen for over a decade. "We will be talking to the authorities about the chance of them seeing each other," he said, emphasising that this was not a case of asylum seekers. The issue is refugees is of course of particular concern to Iran, which is determined not to see a repeat of 1991. Following the events of the Gulf War, about 1.3 million Iraqis sought refuge across Iran's 1,458-km border with Iraq. Today, the country has the largest refugee population in the world, the vast majority of them from Afghanistan.