Palestinian official asks Iraq to protect refugees

Making the highest-level Palestinian visit to Iraq since the 2003 invasion, Palestinian security official Jibril Rajoub told Reuters he won a pledge from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to protect Palestinians living in Iraq and would seek similar assurances from the prime minister.

The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, has often called attention to violence and threats against the more than 15,000 Palestinians living in Iraq.

Seventeen Palestinian men were seized last month by gunmen wearing police uniforms from a house rented by the UNHCR. In October, four people were killed in a mortar attack on a Palestinian neighbourhood of Baghdad.

Displaced from their homes when Israel was founded in 1948, Palestinians are seen as having been favoured by Saddam, who often gave them the homes of Iraqis evicted for opposing his government. Palestinian leaders backed Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

UNHCR said last month that some 700 Palestinians were stranded at the Iraq-Syria border, living in harsh conditions in no-man's land after fleeing violence in Iraq.

"It is the duty of every Iraqi regardless of religious or ethnic background to host the Palestinians and protect them and their national cause," Rajoub quoted Talabani as telling him. Rajoub spoke to Reuters in Dubai by telephone from Iraq.

Syria already hosts 435,000 Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N. and says it is the responsibility of other countries in the region to take their share of Palestinians.

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