Tens of thousands of Iraqis living abroad are keen to return home but are being urged to stay where they are for up to two years, until the security situation improves and they can be properly received.
Iraq's minister of displacement and migration, who recently returned from a tour of European countries, the United States and Canada - where most Iraqi migrants live - said she had asked foreign governments to help in urging Iraqis to wait.
"We asked the countries to co-operate with us and not force the Iraqis to leave because right now we don't have the capability to receive those immigrants," the minister, Pascale Warda, told a news conference on Wednesday.
"Many, many would like to come back very soon, but because of our situation, because of the lack of security, we are calling on them ... to wait a little bit, maybe some months, maybe one year, hopefully not more than two years," she said.
An estimated four million Iraqis live abroad, the bulk of them in Europe and North America, although there are also sizeable populations in Iran, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
Many left in the late 1960s and early 70s, soon after the Baath party, led at its downfall by Saddam Hussein, came to power, while another big wave departed after the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam cracked down on the restive Shia majority.
Since Saddam's fall, with the country racked by crime and insecurity and as guerrillas keep up a near 16-month insurgency against US and Iraqi forces, there have been anecdotal reports of thousands of Iraqis fleeing the country.
In particular, doctors, scientists and other professionals are reported to have left after being targeted by criminals in robberies or kidnappings, provoking a brain drain.
The minister said many of those reports were overblown and said that while many Iraqis were applying for passports, it was often just to visit relatives abroad, not to emigrate wholesale.
"Not that many people have left, not that big a number," she said. "Because of the security situation some are trying to do that ... but it's really not that big a number."
Instead, the bigger problem was planning for the return of those living abroad, an issue that affects the labour, finance, education and human rights ministries as well as immigration.
"If they come, we must have something prepared for them because they are the real re-constructors of the country," she said, identifying the need for adequate housing and jobs.
The minister, whose own Christian family fled Iraq in the late 1980s, spending months living in a refugee camp in southern Turkey, said returnees deserved a decent reception.
"When I was in Britain, I told Iraqis there that they must come back, but first they must wait, they must give us time to prepare properly for their coming."
The ministry is now working with the International Organisation for Migration to draw up lists of Iraqis keen to return and to try to identify their particular needs.
One area of concern, for example, is Iran, where thousands of Shia Muslims fled after the 1991 Gulf War. Many single men that went into exile there have since married and now have families with five or six children.
"How do we cope with that?" asked Warda. "They want to come back, and they should, but we must be able to provide."
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