No priority for Christian Iraqi refugees: EU presidency

By Ingrid Melander

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union rebuffed German calls for specific measures to help Christian refugees from Iraq on Friday, insisting that decisions on asylum could not be based on religion.

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged European countries last week to provide shelter to Christians among the some two million refugees who have fled to Iraq's neighbors to avoid ethnic strife after the 2003 war.

Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation EU, insisted that religion could not be a precondition in asylum decisions.

"International standards are such that they do not permit differentiation on the basis of religions or race," Slovenian Interior Minister Dragutin Mate said after EU interior ministers discussed the issue at a meeting in Luxembourg.

"That is the basic reason why I am afraid it will be very hard to work in that way," he had said earlier in the day, when asked if Christian refugees should be given priority.

Mate said ministers had agreed to discuss at their next meeting in June how to help all minorities in Iraq, with no discrimination on the basis of religion or race.

Writing in Bild am Sonntag newspaper last Sunday, Schaeuble, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) party, raised specific concerns about the plight of Iraq's Christian refugees.

"We must help here and offer them a home in European countries until they can return to their home," Schaeuble wrote.