Envoy Urges Visas For Iraqis Aiding U.S.

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22 July Washington Post - Envoy Urges Visas For Iraqis Aiding U.S. by Spencer Hsu.

The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States.

Crocker's request comes as the administration is struggling to respond to the flood of Iraqis who have sought refuge in neighboring countries since sectarian fighting escalated early last year. The United States has admitted 133 Iraqi refugees since October, despite predicting that it would process 7,000 by the end of September...

Related from yesterday's NY Times - Denmark Says It Secretly Flew Iraqi Employees Out of Iraq by Stephen Farrell.

Denmark has secretly airlifted about 200 translators and other Iraqi employees and their relatives out of Iraq to try to keep them from coming to harm after it withdraws its ground forces later this summer, the Danish government disclosed Friday.

The move was to protect interpreters and other employees, prime targets for Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who accuse Iraqis who work for American-led forces here of being collaborators.

The last of three secret flights departed Friday before dawn with about 80 Iraqis on board, Jakob Winther, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told The Associated Press...

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27 July NY Times - Meeting on Aiding 2 Million Iraqi Refugees Highlights Divisions by Hassan Fattah.

Diplomats and other delegates met here on Thursday to try to find ways to resolve the plight of more than two million Iraqi refugees estimated to be in Jordan, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, but they stopped short of proposing any concrete solutions.

The meeting, a follow-up to a conference of Iraq’s neighbors and donor states in May in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, was intended to help develop a strategy for settling the growing refugee crisis. But it served only to underscore the divided interests of host states that are seeking aid to cover the cost of having the refugees, and those of Iraq and donor states, which are seeking a long-term solution to the escalating crisis...