"We have to help everybody who is persecuted and cannot say there are our Christian brothers and sisters, and for others with a different identity we don't care," said Volker Beck, a senior Green legislator.

The government stance toward opening the door wider to some Iraqis signals a turnaround in Germany's asylum policy as a result of a court ruling. In May, the Federal Administrative Court, the highest appeals court in the country, overturned a 2003 government decision by concluding that Christians and other religious minorities were at risk of persecution as a whole.

Before Saddam Hussein was toppled by U.S.-led forces in the 2003 invasion, there were more than 70,000 Iraqis living in Germany after receiving asylum status on the grounds of political persecution. Their situation changed radically once Saddam was ousted. The German government, then led by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, revoked their asylum status, saying the era of persecution had come to an end.

By last year, the German authorities had stripped more than 8,000 refugees of their asylum status, according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. This meant many would be denied social benefits and the right to work.

Since 2003, as civil unrest, suicide bombings and instability spread throughout many parts of Iraq, more than 2.2 million Iraqis have fled the country, many settling temporarily in neighboring Jordan and Syria, according to the UN refugee commission.

Tens of thousands have also sought refuge in Europe, with Sweden taking in from 19,000 to 20,000 without giving preferential treatment to any group or religion.

In 2006, for example, more than 19,494 Iraqis applied for asylum throughout EU countries, of which 9,065 sought refuge in Sweden, 2,585 in Germany and 2,506 in the Netherlands. Less than 950 applied for asylum in Britain and only 153 in France. The Roman Catholic establishment in France is also expressing more concern about the persecution in Iraq.

During 2007, the number of applicants seeking asylum in Germany had increased to 4,327, with Sweden dealing with 18,559 applicants and Greece, probably because of its proximity to the region, dealing with more than 5,400.

Sweden recently, however, turned to Brussels in an attempt to persuade the other 26 EU member states to share more of the burden. The Swedish Interior Ministry said that under the EU's Temporary Protection Directive, member states were obliged to take in refugees for a limited amount of time.

Under the terms of this directive, temporary protection could be granted for a year and then extended at six- month intervals but only up to a maximum of three years.

Germany opposed applying the directive, saying it could be invoked only in cases of a mass influx of refugees. German officials argued that this was not the case with Iraq and that the situation bore no comparison to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, in which hundreds of thousands of refugees fled fighting.

By Judy Dempsey Published: April 16, 2008