UN, Iraq begin relocation of Iranian exiles

The United Nations and the Iraqi government started Tuesday the relocation of several hundreds of Iranian exiles living in Camp Ashraf northeast of Baghdad to a temporary location in the capital, an official TV channel reported. "The Iraqi authorities started moving some 400 of the residents of Camp Ashraf to a temporary location in Baghdad," the state-run channel of Iraqia said. Most of the camp residents are members of the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran, also known as Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO). The self-claimed Marxist and Islamic movement was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran. It subsequently fought to oust the Islamic regime that took power in the 1979 revolution. The group fled to Iraq in 1986 and set up Ashraf Camp northeast of Baghdad about 80 kilometers from the Iranian border. Currently, more than 3,000 Iranians and their families live in the camp. After the MKO fighters were disarmed following the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq, the camp had been under the protection of the U. S. military for five years before the Iraqi government took over its security. On Sunday, the Iraqi government and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq struck a deal that starts a process to move the camp residents in Diyala province to Baghdad temporarily. According to media reports, the location will be the former U. S. military base Camp Liberty near the Baghdad airport in the southwest. At the new location, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will interview the residents to determine if they are eligible to get a refugee status before they get resettled in a third country, the reports said. Ties between Shiite Iran and Iraq, whose government is now dominated by Shiites, have picked up considerably since the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime in 2003. Iraq and Iran fought a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s, causing the loss of one million lives.