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Baghdad: A dispute is raging between the United Nations and the Iraqi government on the number of Iraqi refugees living abroad - particularly in Jordan, Syria and Egypt - who have returned to Iraq.
While the UN report said that the number of returning refugees is less than the number of those departing, Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf, director of the operations at the Interior Ministry, denied this.
Khalaf told Gulf News the UN's figures were inaccurate and that returning Iraqi refugees vastly outnumber those leaving.
He said the UN was not aware that the improving security situation prompted many Iraqis to return, but UN sources considered their departure as final.
"Iraqi refugees returning home are increasing," said Tahsin Al Sheikhli, the civilian spokesman of the Baghdad operations command.
"The Iraqi Interior Ministry's statistics show that the proportion of the returnees in months 7, 8 and 9 of this year, is much bigger than the proportion of returnees in the same months of 2007."
He added that the UN's report is not objective regarding the pressure from the Iraqi government on the states that harbour the refugees to return them to Iraq by force.
He stressed that authorities are opening more offices in neighbouring countries and in Egypt to encourage and facilitate the return of Iraqi refugees.
Abdul Khalek Zangana, Chairman of the Committee of the displaced and refugees in the Iraqi parliament, attributes the reluctance of the refugees to return to lack of confidence in the future political and security situation in their homeland.
A very serious matter, he said, is that some refugees who had returned, left Iraq again .
"Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and Minister of Finance Baqer Al Zubaidi plan to raise the salaries of university professors, doctors and engineers with more than 500 per cent in order to encourage the return of the refugees and to prevent some of them to emigrate to the United States," sources in the Iraqi Cabinet Office said.
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