Kurdish Refugees Seek Return to Iraq

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Piroz Nasser Zanganeh has moved from one refugee camp to another for 16 years, ever since Saddam Hussein's security agents drove her from this northern Iraq city. Now she is ready to come home. But Zanganeh and her relatives can only get as far as a tent at the edge of the city because the U.S.-led coalition says it's too soon for them to come back. More than 4,000 Kurdish families are in the same situation...

U.S.-led forces are trying to keep Kurds who lost their homes in Saddam's campaign of ethnic cleansing from coming back too quickly...Kirkuk, which sits on some of the world's largest oil reserves, is considered a difficult case...

Saddam brought Arabs to Kirkuk, sometimes given homes of displaced Kurds to "Arabize" the city. Many Kurds want the Arabs who came during Saddam's rule to return to where they came from, something the Coalition Provisional Authority opposes.

The U.S.-led coalition asked the PUK to stop supplying tents to the returnees to discourage them from coming back.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040210_333.html