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UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General on Friday noted "with satisfaction" the completion of the relocation of more than 3,000 Camp Hurriya residents, a camp for exiled Iranians near the Iraqi capital, as requested by the government of Iraq, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here.
"The Secretary-General is pleased that his good offices efforts through his special advisor, Jane Holl Lute, resulted in the successful resolution of this humanitarian issue," Dujarric said in a statement issued here.
Ban Ki-moon "expresses his gratitude to the member states and international organizations that supported these efforts," Dujarric added.
Camp Hurriya is a former U.S. military installation in Baghdad, Iraq, and it was used to house the members of the People's Mujahedin of Iran who were forcibly evicted from Camp Ashraf.
In late 2011, the Iraqi government and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq struck a deal to move the camp residents in Diyala province to Baghdad temporarily until the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) gets the refugees resettled in a third country.
In October 2013, the United Nations on Wednesday launched a trust fund initiative to help relocate residents of the camp. Ban urged UN member states to contribute to the fund to cover relocation.
The United Nations frequently urged the international community to speed up its efforts to resettle the Iranian exiles in third countries.
Ties between the Shiite Muslim country of Iran and the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq have been picked up considerably since the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime in a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Iraq and Iran fought a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s, resulting in the loss of one million lives.
