"This is not a life. We want to be relocated somewhere else. We don't want to return to Iraq or necessarily enter Jordan," Khabat Mohammadi told AFP in a telephone interview from the isolated desert camp that is home to 193 Iranian Kurds.

"We need a radical solution to our plight," he said.

Mohammadi charged that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which marked World Refugee Day on Tuesday, has stopped providing the camp with food, water and medicine.

"They have not offered us anything since the middle of 2005. The US army are giving us water twice a month, while truck drivers who ply the Amman-Baghdad desert highway supply us with food," he added.

In March the UNHCR said it was unable to assist the refugees for logistical reasons, and urged them to relocate to Iraqi Kurdistan where the agency has set up compounds to receive them.

The no-man's land camp is in a military zone in western Iraq along the border with Jordan, and cannot be accessed by UNHCR representatives.

In September the UN refugee agency reached an agreement with Kurdistan's Regional Government to relocate the refugees to Kawa in Arbil province in northern Iraq, but the Iranian Kurds are refusing to go there.

"We don't want to return to Iraq because Kawa is close to the Iranian border and we will not feel safe there," Mohammadi said.

Iranian Kurds fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution and moved to Iraq where they lived in al-Tash refugee camp near the western city of Ramadi, now a stronghold of the deadly insurgency.

"Resettlement to a third country is only possible when there is a clear need and when there is no other alternative," the UNHCR's Yara Sherif told AFP, adding that Kawa was currently the best destination they could hope for.

She reiterated that by refusing to relocate to Kawa, the refugees -- including women and children -- were putting themselves at risk.

"Resettlement is not a right, but it is their right to want to live in dignity," she said.

Sherif said some of the refugees have told UNHCR representatives that they want to return to Iran. "We welcome that and are ready to help them if needs be," she added.

According to the UNHCR, the refugees want to be allowed inside Jordan to a transit camp that was set up in the immediate aftermath of the US-led war on Iraq in March 2003.

They then want to be resettled by the agency in third countries abroad.

But Jordan, already home to 1.7 million Palestinian refugees, has repeatedly refused to accept more refugees for demographic and economic reasons.

Jordan did, however, open the gates to its territory briefly in 2004, allowing hundreds of Iranian Kurds to enter the transit camp. They were later resettled in third countries that included Sweden and Denmark.