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Jolie in Iraq
for UN refugee mission
BAGHDAD—Angelina Jolie brought her star power to Baghdad Thursday on a
mission as a U.N. goodwill ambassador to highlight the plight of Iraqi
refugees.
The actress said there needs to be a more coherent plan as the more than
2 million internally displaced Iraqis begin to trickle back to their
homes amid a recent lull in violence that had threatened to spark a
civil war in the country. "There's lots of goodwill and lots of
discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment,"
Jolie said in excerpts of an interview aired on CNN.
"What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come is going
to affect the entire Middle East," she added. "And a big part of what
it's going to affect, how it settles, is how these people are returned
and settled into their homes and their community and brought back
together and whether they can live together and what their communities
look like."
Jolie's itinerary included meetings with the top U.S. commander in Iraq
Gen. David Petraeus, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iraqi
migration officials during her visit, according to the American Embassy.
AP Television News footage also showed the Academy Award-winning actress
mingling with American troops during lunch at a dining facility in the
heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the embassy and Iraqi
government offices in central Baghdad.—Agencies
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