EU leaders clashed today over a plan to set up camps in North Africa to process immigrants and asylum seekers to help stop the flow of illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees proposed autonomy for the troubled Darfur region of Sudan – an extreme measure that Khartoum has resisted but said today it would be willing to discuss.

The United Nations refugee chief Rudd Lubbers is under investigation for sexual harassment after a staff member filed a complaint.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has warned European Union justice ministers that enlargement may overwhelm the asylum systems in some new member states.

The UN refugee chief blamed Liberia and warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor on for the conflicts and refugee crises in West Africa, and said in unusually blunt terms that Taylor should be forced out.

Dozens of Iraqi refugees – mostly children – have been expelled from a camp in Syria and sent back to their homeland, the United Nations said today.

THE head of the United Nations refugee agency yesterday said he expected 500,000 to 600,000 people to flee Iraq if the country came under attack, and appealed to neighbours to accommodate them at their borders.

IRELAND has the second highest number of asylum seekers per head of population in the European Union, according to latest figures.

WAR with Iraq, with biological or chemical agents possibly unleashed, will be a human calamity, the UN refugee chief has warned — exactly a month before a final arms inspectors’ report might trigger a conflict.

The crew and owners of a Norwegian freighter that staged a daring high seas rescue of 438 asylum seekers last year were presented the Nansen Refugee Prize today as part of events marking World Refugee Day.

Jan Peter Balkenende, a professor of Christian philosophy who brought youthful energy to his disunited party, emerged today as the favourite to become the Netherlands’ next prime minister.

Pakistan is closing its border with Afghanistan again, after 3,000 refugees entered the country.

The UN refugee chief said millions of Afghan refugees are vulnerable to hostility and intolerance in countries where they seek asylum in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The new United Nations refugee chief has appealed for a "safe corridor" for refugees from Guinea's southern borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone.