Amman (dpa) - Jordan has rejected a U.N. call for the extension of a refugee camp hosting roughly 500 people, mostly Palestinians who fled the war in Iraq, official sources said Wednesday.
They added the interior ministry had plans to evacuate the camp, near the borders with Iraq, following the departure of nearly 400 Palestinians bearing Iraqi, Egyptian or Lebanese travel documents.
The camp - erected early this year in preparation for a possible influx of war refugees - is also hosting 90 Sudanese and Somali nationals.
Seventy camp dwellers - from Somalia, Sudan and a few Palestinians - had been granted refugee status in a third country, notably the U.S.
Meanwhile, Israel - which still controls border crossings into the occupied Palestinian territories 10 years after the self-rule accords - refused the entry of 400 Palestinians with Iraqi documents.
Egypt received only 10 out of 26 Palestinian bearing its travel documents. So did the Lebanese authorities, which turned down a request to receive three Palestinian women with Lebanese documents.
Iraq is home to nearly 200,000 Palestinian refugees, who fled their homeland in the throes of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.
Since the war on Iraq, dozens of Palestinian families were displaced or persecuted. Jordan, home to 41 per cent of UNRWA-registered refugees estimated at 3.7 million, had already received 68 Palestinian women bearing Jordanian passports, along with their family members.
There is a second camp, hosting about 1,100 Iranian opponents, notably Kurds, stranded in a no-mans-land between Jordan and Iraq.
dpa sgh sc AP-NY-12-24-03 1240EST
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Received by NewsEdge Insight: 12/24/2003 12:40:26