Governments have agreed to delay sending back Iraqi refugees, heeding UN advice that it is too early and too unsafe for them to return home.
"People accept that in the second half of this year, there should only be limited repatriation and that the major repatriation should be next year and 2005," said Mr Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Mr Lubbers hosted the meeting in Geneva at the request of European governments who have frozen all new Iraqi applications for asylum and are granting them temporary protection but don't want this to go on indefinitely.
Around four million Iraqis are believed to have fled during the decades of Saddam's regime, but most have settled permanently abroad.
There are an estimated 262,600 Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers in industrialised countries, the vast majority of them in Europe.
This is in addition to about 668,500 Iraqis in neighbouring countries, of whom 450,000 live in "refugee-like" situations but don't have any papers.
AP
