If we ever "stabilize" Iraq, will anyone still live there?

From BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6916791.stm

An international conference in Jordan on the more than two million Iraqi refugees uprooted by war has pledged to help them with their difficulties.

But it insisted the solution to the problem lay in their return home and that the Iraqi government was directly responsible for its displaced citizens.

The UN refugee agency, Unrwa, said some 50,000 more Iraqis were escaping the violence in their homeland each month.

Most are ending up in Jordan and Syria, which want help to ease the burden.

Unrwa said the wave of displacement sparked by the war in Iraq was the biggest in the Middle East since 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the newly created Israel.

A final statement at the end of the conference, which was attended by Iraq's neighbours, as well as the UN, US and UK, called on the international community to provide all possible support to the Iraqi people.

It also insisted countries hosting refugees were given assistance "so that they can continue to provide an adequate level of services to Iraqi nationals", particularly in health and education.

The host countries should have the authority to regulate the entry and residence of Iraqi nationals "in line with their law and considerations", the statement added.

But the conference stopped short of addressing calls by Jordan and Syria earlier in the day for rich western nations to take in greater numbers of refugees.

The Iraqi government said it would make available a promised $25m for those straining under the load of the burgeoning numbers of refugees.

'Real humanitarian crisis'

Earlier, the secretary-general of the Iraqi foreign ministry, Muhammad Hajj Hamoud, said the refugee problem should not be underestimated.

He added that efforts to stem the flow of refugees by Iraq's neighbours - who now impose tougher entry restrictions - resulted in cases of mistreatment at border crossings.

One refugee in Jordan, Najla Abda Karim Saleh, fled with her son and daughter. Another daughter was killed in sectarian violence.

She told the BBC she wanted help from the UN to bring her four grandchildren to safety in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

"We have lost [our] house, we are lost, my daughter is lost, my son [is] lost... help this family please," she wept.

Read the entire article