"We want to go back under United Nations supervision, but Iran does not accept us and we have no status under the UN," said Mahmoud Azizi, a member of a committee representing 223 Kurdish-Iranian families in Camp Qawa in Iraqi Kurdistan's capital, Arbil.

The Kurds were driven from their homes in Iran's Kasr Shirin village at the start of Saddam Hussein's war against the Islamic Republic in 1981 by Baathist forces. They were resettled in what is today the predominantly Sunni Arab province of Al-Anbar.

The Kurds fled Anbar, where they were harassed and attacked by insurgents, to Kurdistan at the end of 2005. But some 25 families remain in the desert region, said Mansur Abdallah, a 21-year-old camp resident.

"The situation grew worse for us there after the fall of the regime. Here most of the young people are unemployed. We lack basic goods," Abdallah said.

A Kurdish government official said the refugees were ready to accept any form of recognition so that they could qualify for more assistance.

"These people want to go back to Iran, but they would settle for political asylum in Iraq," said Deiyar Zibari, the Kurdish provincial government's UN liaison.

Zibari said the Kurdish regional government was prepared to build homes for the refugees with UN assistance if and when they were given an official status by the UN's refugee agency.

Qawa itself was built with UN assistance, he said.