Washington may accept 830 Arab refugees

The UN High Commission for Refugees UNHCR on Monday announced that a US delegation in Damascus has been studying for ten days to offer some 830 Iraqi, Somali and Sudanese refugees in Syria asylum in the USA.

UNHCR official Muhammad al-Deyri said that official staff from the US immigration department are interviewing the refugees, adding that they will choose many of those refugees to offer them "the right to reside" in the US. The UN says that the Iraqi refugees arrived in Syria following the Gulf War in 1991 while the Somalis escaped the civil war in their country and the Sudanese arrived in Syria for different reasons.

UNHCR sources said that refugees of varying nationalities, apart from the Palestinians, have been residing in Syria since the end of 1997, where 2,686 refugees including 1,335 Iraqis live in the Damascus region. The 1,335 Iraqi refugees live in al-Hall camp in al-Hassaka province in northeastern Syria.

Al-Deyri said that the UNHCR pays $40-70 monthly for each formally-registered family.