By Luke Baker LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) - Britain must adopt a "more principled, more coherent" refugee policy, especially with respect to Iraq, where up to 50,000 people are fleeing their homes each month, human rights groups said on Monday. In a statement released a day before a U.N. conference to examine the plight of Iraq's refugees, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said Britain, as a key player in the war in Iraq, needed to take a lead on the issue. "At a time when the international community is calling on Iraq's neighbours to keep their borders open to asylum seekers, we believe it sends a contradictory signal for your government to be deporting Iraqis to their homelands," the organisations said in a joint letter sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair and also signed by Britain's Refugee Council. "Because of Britain's involvement in the Iraq conflict, Britain should be playing a leading role in addressing this humanitarian crisis." The U.N.'s refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates 40,000-50,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month to escape the fighting and sectarian violence that has riven the country. It will host a conference on the issue in Geneva on April 17-18. Those refugees join around two million who have already escaped the country, most of them heading to Jordan, Syria and Egypt, causing humanitarian problems there. Some countries in the region are now threatening to close their borders to Iraq. "As well as putting individual lives at risk, this would be a serious threat to the international refugee protection system, as well as the fundamental human right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution," the rights groups wrote in the letter. In calling on Britain to adopt a "more generous, more principled, more coherent and more far-sighted" set of policies, they highlighted the case of three Iraqi interpreters who worked for the British army in Basra. After receiving death threats from insurgent groups, and after several of their colleagues were tortured and killed, the interpreters fled to Syria, where they have been trying to meet British consular officials to discuss asylum. "We have been unable to get interviews to present our cases and our documents and to request assistance or asylum," the three wrote in a letter sent to Blair from Damascus. Britain's Home Office, which deals with asylum issues, said it could not comment on individual cases such as the three interpreters. Human Rights Watch urged Britain to be as bold as the United States, which has agreed to resettle 7,000 refugees from Iraq.
