Iraq asks refugees to delay homecoming

BAGHDAD – The Iraqi government on Tuesday urged some refugees not to go back to their homes yet, saying the country was unprepared to accommodate their return.

“The reality is that we cannot handle a huge influx of people,” Abdul Samad al-Sultan, the minister of displacement and migration, said at a news conference to announce a joint plan with the United Nations to help returning Iraqis. “The refugees in some countries, we ask them to wait.”

The acknowledgment came as the Iraqi Cabinet asked the United Nations for what the government called a final one-year extension of authorization for U.S.-led forces to stay in Iraq. But in a newly released video, insurgents threatened to kill a British hostage unless the United Kingdom withdrew its forces.

In the video, aired Tuesday on al-Arabiya television, masked men holding assault rifles flanked one of five British citizens – a computer instructor and his bodyguards – who were kidnapped from the Finance Ministry in Baghdad in May.

The group, called the Shiite Islamic Resistance in Iraq, said it would kill the captive in 10 days unless British troops withdrew from Iraq, apologized to the Iraqi people and ended the presence of “fake companies and organizations” that “devour the body of Iraq and Iraqis.”

Also Tuesday, in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, an Arab political bloc ended its yearlong boycott of the provincial council, a step toward reconciliation sought by U.S. officials. Members of the Iraqi Republican Gathering agreed to return to the council in exchange for Arabs receiving nearly a third of the positions in local government.

“This is a big achievement for Kirkuk and brotherhood and peaceful living together,” said Razgar ali Hamajan, a Kurd who is head of the Kirkuk provincial council.

The U.S. military announced that a U.S. soldier was killed by an explosion Monday in Anbar province. Two other service members were reported wounded.