Germany’s Angela Merkel supports helping Iraqi refugees return home
Posted by judyw on July 24, 2008
Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is visiting Germany this week. Deutche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster, reports:
Speaking to reporters after talks with Chancellor Merkel in Berlin, al-Maliki said he also wanted to encourage the thousands of Iraqis who fled the spiraling violence in their country in recent years to return home without forcing them to do so. His government did not discriminate between Muslims and Christians, or between Sunnis and Shias, he added.
Chancellor Merkel reacted positively.
The Iraqi government has stated that the security situation is improving and that “it will adopt a program on the return of refugees within the next 60 days,” Merkel said. “I think we should back plans to see the greatest number return home, with necessary encouragements,” she said, adding that Germany would brief its EU partners on the Iraqi position at a meeting of interior ministers on Thursday this week.
Maybe Merkel should get on the phone with President Bush and tell him to overrule the gaggle of NGOs, volags, UN officials and other self-interested parties who want to resettle as many Iraqis as possible in foreign countries. Instead he could immediately announce that helping as many refugees as possible return home is now official U.S. policy, and he will work with her and Maliki and any other nations that want to join in to help make this happen. Maliki’s government has had ongoing problems implementing its plans, so concrete help would no doubt be welcome. We already have a few people in Iraq, don’t we? Why can’t some of them work on this pressing issue?
(There is always the possibility that the U.S. is working on it already. We’d never know from our own media.)
Posted in Europe, Iraqi refugees | 1 Comment »