March 22, 2003	Saturday	Muharram 18, 1424

KARAMA BORDER CROSSING (Jordan), March 21: More than 300 refugees trickled across Iraq’s borders, but there was no exodus as war broke out.

The first arrivals included Sudanese families who moved to Baghdad with dreams of riches only to head home a decade later penniless and disillusioned.

Volunteers at two camps struggled against a fierce, biting wind on Thursday on the parched plains of Jordan to erect beige tents bearing the logo of the Red Crescent Society. Workers sprayed asphalt, unpacked medicine and hoisted floodlights to build towns of tents.

Officials acknowledged that preliminary work had gone slowly at Jordan’s border. They blamed the heavy winds and a funding shortfall.

Peter Kessler, spokesman for the UN refugee agency, said only $21 million of a requested $60 million had been donated for initial preparations.

In Syria, there was no sign of Iraqis fleeing on the first day of US-led strikes against their country.

A border crossing opened in 1997, the Tanef crossing, some 300km northeast of Damascus, was almost empty save for a few drivers bringing in Yemeni and Jordanian students from Iraq.

Iraqi opposition had said earlier that Iraq was not allowing people to leave. But customs officials at Tanef said the crossing was open to Iraqis but that none had come. Tanef, a major passageway for Syrian-Iraqi trade under the UN oil-for-food programme, is a 600km drive from Baghdad.

In Jordan, several busloads of Sudanese citizens rumbled across the border on Thursday and into a camp for third-country nationals. They said Sudan’s embassy in Iraq had offered them buses to Jordan, where the International Organization for Migration said it would fly them home.

Meanwhile, some 30 people holding both Iraqi and another Arab citizenship were being held in no-man’s land between the Iraqi and Jordanian border, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said.

Spokesman Peter Kessler was quoted by AFP from Ruwsihed (Jordan) as saying the UNHCR was “trying to negotiate their entry into Jordan as they are not seeking asylum.”

SYRIA WILLING: Syrian authorities plan to allow Iraqi war refugees to cross their border and have informed humanitarian organizations to that effect, a Syrian minister said on Friday.

“Syria has informed international organizations of the United Nations of their readiness to cooperate with them and other humanitarian groups,” Local Administration Minister Hilal Atrash said.

UNHCR chief Ruud Lubbers has urged Iraq’s neighbour states to keep their borders open to refugees.—Agencies