Apr 20, 2007, 15:03 GMT
Luxembourg - The European Union on Friday said the Iraqi refugee crisis must be tackled in the region, stressing that there was no need for resettlement of Iraqis inside the EU.
'The numbers of refugees from Iraq is not such at the moment that we have to start emergency measures,' German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said after a meeting with his EU counterparts.
Schaeuble, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said the problem of Iraqi refugees needed to be tackled in the region.
'The money spent there could help ten times more,' he added.
However, EU ministers made no pledges for new assistance to Iraq's neighbouring states, which bear the brunt of the refugee crisis.
Syria is hosting 1.2 million Iraqis. At least 750,000 Iraqi refugees are estimated to live in Jordan, which has a population of 5.7 million.
EU justice chief Franco Frattini said the European Commission would make some 6 million euros available for EU countries which are seeing a growing influx of refugees from Iraq.
Sweden, which grants refugee status or other protection to almost all Iraqi asylum seekers, hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees in the EU.
Some 9,000 Iraqis found a new home in Sweden last year. Stockholm expects some 20,000 more this year.
Around 20,000 Iraqis applied for asylum in the EU in 2006 compared to 2005 an increase of 77 per cent. Experts say the number is likely to double this year.
Swedish Migration Minister Tobias Billstroem demanded in Luxembourg that other EU countries take in more vulnerable people fleeing Iraq. He also called for a further harmonization of widely differing asylum procedures in the EU.
Despite a commitment to an EU-wide common asylum system, member states not only take different approaches to Iraqi claims but also apply very different standards of treatment to asylum seekers.
Germany's Schaeuble said the number of Iraqis fleeing to Europe was too small to invoke EU rules under which all asylum seekers would have to be accepted temporarily in the 27-member bloc without going through the usual asylum procedures.
EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, however, said resettlement of Iraqi refugees could become an issue for the whole EU if the situation in the strife-torn country further deteriorated.
'A joint commitment on behalf of the EU member states would be a concrete demonstration of burden-sharing vis a vis the hosting countries,' Frattini added in a letter to the German EU presidency.
The United Nations have called for a global solution to the Iraqi refugee situation, saying countries worldwide needed to alleviate a mounting humanitarian crisis in the Middle East by taking in Iraqis seeking to escape the escalating violence in the country.
Under EU rules adopted in 2001, temporary protection will be provided immediately to refugees from outside the EU 'where there might be a risk that the standard asylum system will be unable to process this influx without severely damaging it.'
The legal tool was developed following the conflicts in former Yugoslavia. However, EU member states have not yet used the rules.
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