Sunday, 2 March 2008

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SEE VIDEO Angelina Jolie: US has moral obligation to help Iraqi refugees

Actress beds US to

A demure Angelina attends the Deauville Film Festival in France

Angelina Jolie has written a passionate article asking the US to help the millions of innocent Iraqis who have been driven out of their homes.

Many fled the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, followed by those trying to escape the violence that accompanied the president's ousting.

The actress, 32, is a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees and believes America has a moral obligation to assist.

'More than 2 million people are...without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water,' she writes.

'Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man's land.

'Fifty-eight per cent of these internally displaced people are younger than 12 years old.'

Angelina has witnessed the suffering first-hand.

'The Iraqi families I've met on my trips to the region are proud and resilient,' she says. 'They don't want anything from us other than the chance to return to their homes - or, where those homes have been bombed to the ground or occupied by squatters, to build new ones.'

Angelina's plea, titled A Reason To Stay In Iraq, is published in full in The Washington Post.

SEE VIDEO of Angelina Jolie with the troops in Iraq...

Angelina Jolie goes to wartorn Iraq>>

Alison Adey