IRAQ: Iraq grants asylum to thousands of Turkish Kurdish refugees

[G.LANGE at LINK-GOE.de]

Jordan Times, 7/6/1998


        *Iraq grants asylum to thousands of Turkish*
                     *Kurdish refugees*

 BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq has agreed to grant asylum to some 6,800
 Turkish Kurdish refugees, the U.N. refugee agency said Saturday.

 The Turkish Kurds have been stranded on the line dividing
 government-held areas from regions controlled by Iraqi Kurds
 in the north of the country, said Abid Mair, a representative
 of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

 "We are very glad that the government has accepted them," he
 said.

 The UNHCR had urged the Iraqi authorities to accept the refugees
 on humanitarian grounds, Mr. Mair said.

 The Turkish Kurds fled their homeland in 1994 and first lived in
 a refugee camp in northern Iraq, which was closed by the UNHCR
 in January 1997. The agency said that activists of the Kurdish
 Labour Party or PKK had taken over the camp. The group is
 leading the fight for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey.

 Some of the refugees later fled to a provincial camp at Ain
 Sifni, within the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.

 They abandoned that camp in Febnuary and moved to a makeshift
 camp on the periphery of the government-held area. The U.N.
 humanitarian spokesman in Iraq, Eric Falt, said the U.N. World
 Food Programme is assisting the refugees, providing food and
 other essentials.

 Under Iraqi regulations, the Turkish Kurds are now entitled to
 free health care, education and social security.

 They will also receive free food rations of flour, rice, sugar
 and other essentials under the country's oil-for-food deal with
 the United Nations.

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