U.N. says to help Iraqis choosing to return home

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday it was not ready to recommend Iraqis return home despite its plan to help repatriate 15,000 refugee families.

In a 2008 appeal to governments, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is seeking $261 million to provide health care, education, and cash to Iraqis uprooted by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent sectarian violence.

The appeal includes funds to assist up to 15,000 families who may choose to return home from Syria, Jordan and other countries that host 2 million Iraqis.

Many of those who fled Iraq have congregated in cities such as Damascus and Amman where they are running out of money and finding it increasingly difficult to get by, the UNHCR said.

"This refugee situation represents the largest urban population which UNHCR has ever been called upon to respond to and poses an unprecedented load on the economies and social infrastructures of host countries," it said in its appeal.

UNHCR said it was "seeking to ensure the continued safe stay of Iraqis in their respective asylum countries until voluntary repatriation becomes a viable option".

Iraqi authorities have estimated at least 30,000 families returned to Iraq in late 2007, though the Iraqi Red Crescent said last week the numbers were much lower.

Spokesman Ron Redmond said the Geneva-based agency was neither promoting nor encouraging Iraqis to return home, given the lack of security and of access to essential services.

"We are ready, however, to support the government in providing assistance to those who do decide to return," he told a news briefing.

In addition to those who left the country, some 2.2 million Iraqis have been uprooted within Iraq. Every Iraqi province now hosts internally displaced people, and many are struggling to provide them with shelter, food and water, the UNHCR said.

The UNHCR also aims to resettle more than 20,000 of the most vulnerable Iraqis, including torture victims, women at risk and female-headed households, in other countries this year.

In 2007 it referred more than 21,000 Iraqis for resettlement in 16 countries including the United States, Canada, Sweden and Australia. Only about 4,600 had moved by early December, due in part to governments' slow procedures, the UNHCR said.

(Editing by Robert Woodward)