The administration of US President George W. Bush is nearing the halfway point in its goal to admit 12,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September, the State Department said on Saturday amid a flurry of activity on the issue.
Several senators on Friday called for the appointment of a White House coordinator for Iraqi refugees and said the administration had not done enough to help those who have fled Iraq. The next day, the department said it was on track to meet the 12,000 target.
Also on Saturday, the US diplomat dealing with the matter arrived in Jordan as part of a four-nation Middle East tour intended to help streamline the process, assess refugees’ needs and determine how best they can be assisted.
The department normally releases refugee admission statistics on a monthly basis. But on Saturday, the department said that more than 1,000 Iraqis had been admitted to the US in the first half of this month.
The half-month figure for the month is close to the 1,141 admitted for all of last month, which was a record. Last month’s admissions brought to 4,742 the number of Iraqi refugees accepted since the current budget year began on Oct. 1. With the latest report, that total is closing in on 6,000.
“We have thus far admitted over 5,800 refugees this fiscal year, and have interviewed and conditionally approved more than enough to reach 12,000,” said a department spokesman, Tom Casey. “While it will be a challenge, we are on track to meet our goal.”
To meet its goal of admitting 12,000 by the end of the budget year on Sept. 30, the administration must allow in about 6,200 over the next three-and-a-half months.
The 12,000 target is still far lower than the number admitted by other countries and only a small slice of the some 2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Sweden, for example, has granted asylum to about 40,000 since 2003.
Advocacy groups and lawmakers have criticized the US for its poor performance on admitting Iraqi refugees.
The Middle East tour by James Foley, the department’s senior coordinator for Iraqi refugees, will bring him to countries that have the largest populations of Iraqi refugees, including Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.
“We are confident that we can move 6,000 Iraqi refugees to the US in the final three months of the fiscal year, thereby reaching our goal,” Foley said in an e-mail from Amman, Jordan.
He also planned a rare stop in Syria next week. Visits to Syria by US officials are unusual due to strong US objections to Syrian policies in Lebanon and its support for anti-Israel groups.
Foley’s “visit to Syria is focused primarily on assessing the assistance needs of Iraqi refugees in that country and others in the region and looking at what additional steps the international community can take to address them,” Casey said.
Some in Congress, however, think much more needs to be done.
On Friday, a group of lawmakers led by Senator Edward Kennedy introduced a bill that would create an ambassador-level post at the White House to oversee efforts to assist Iraqi refugees. Currently, that policy is handled by the departments of State and Homeland Security.
“It’s long past time for America to reaffirm our responsibility to end the refugee crisis caused by the Iraq war,” Kennedy spokesman Anthony Coley said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS